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THE   ESSAYS    OF 
SIR     LESLIE    STEPHEN 

(Literary  and  Critical) 

Authorized  American  Edition,  to  be  complete  in  ten 
volumes,  printed  from  new  type. 

Free  Thinking  and  Plain  Speaking 

I    Volume. 

Hours  In  a  Library 

4  Volumes. 

Studies  of  a  Biographer 

4  Volumes. 

English  Literature  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century 

I    Volume. 


The  Life  and  Letters  of  Leslie  Stephen 

By  Frederic  William  Maitland 
Octavo. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW   YORK  LONDON 


PR 
English  If 

Literature  and  Society    '"^oi 

in  the  SfkLF 

Eighteenth    Century 

Ford  Lectures,  1903 


By 


Leslie  Stephen 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

(Tbe  fintcfterbocflec  press 

1907 


UtK  Knicfierbocfier  ptces,  't^ew  ]?otk 


To  Herbert  Fisher 

New  College,  Oxford 

My  dear  Herbert, — I  had  prepared  these 
Lectures  for  delivery,  when  a  serious  breakdown 
of  health  made  it  utterly  impossible  for  me  to 
appear  in  person.  The  University  was  then  good 
enough  to  allow  me  to  employ  a  deputy;  and 
you  kindly  undertook  to  read  the  Lectures  for 
me.  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  they 
lost  nothing  by  the  change. 

I  need  only  explain  that,  although  they  had  to 
be  read  in  six  sections,  and  are  here  divided  into 
five  chapters,  no  other  change  worth  noticing  has 
been  made.  Other  changes  probably  ought  to 
have  been  made,  but  my  health  has  been  unequal 
to  the  task  of  serious  correction.  The  publication 
has  been  delayed  from  the  same  cause. 

Meanwhile,  I  wish  to  express  my  gratitude  for 
your  services.  I  doubt,  too,  whether  I  should 
have  ventured  to  republish  them,  had  it  not  been 

iU 


iv      English  Literature  and  Society 

for  your  assertion  that  they  have  some  interest. 
I  woiild  adopt  the  good  old  form  of  dedicating 
them  to  you,  were  it  not  that  I  can  find  no  prece- 
dent for  a  dedication  by  an  uncle  to  a  nephew — 
uncles  having,  I  fancy,  certain  opinions  as  to  the 
light  in  which  they  are  generally  regarded  by 
nephews.  I  will  not  say  what  that  is,  nor  mention 
another  reason  which  has  its  weight.  I  will  only 
say  that,  though  this  is  not  a  dedication,  it  is 
meant  to  express  a  very  warm  sense  of  gratitude 
due  to  you  upon  many  grounds. 
Your  affectionate 

Leslie  Stephen. 

Noventber,  1903. 


English  Literature  and  Society  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century 

I 

WHEN  I  was  honoured  by  the  invitation  to 
deHver  this  course  of  lectures,  I  did  not  ac- 
cept without  some  hesitation.  I  am  not  qualified 
to  speak  with  authority  upon  such  subjects  as  have 
been  treated  by  my  predecessors — the  course  of 
political  events  or  the  growth  of  legal  institutions. 
My  attention  has  been  chiefly  paid  to  the  history 
of  literature,  and  it  might  be  doubtful  whether 
that  study  is  properly  included  in  the  phrase 
"historical."  Yet  literature  expresses  men's 
thoughts  and  passions,  which  have,  after  all, 
a  considerable  influence  upon  their  lives.  The 
writer  of  a  people's  songs,  as  we  are  told,  may 
even  have  a  more  powerful  influence  than  the 
maker  of  their  laws.  He  certainly  reveals  more 
directly  the  true  springs  of  popular  action.  The 
truth  has  been  admitted  by  many  historians  who 
are  too  much  overwhelmed  by  State  papers  to 
find  space  for  any  extended  application  of  the 


2       English  Literature  and  Society 

method.  No  one,  I  think,  has  shown  more 
clearly  how  much  light  could  be  derived  from 
this  source  than  your  Oxford  historian,  J.  R.  Green, 
in  some  brilliant  passages  of  his  fascinating  book. 
Moreover,  if  I  may  venture  to  speak  of  myself, 
my  own  interest  in  literature  has  always  been 
closely  connected  with  its  philosophical  and  social 
significance.  Literature  may  of  course  be  studied 
simply  for  its  own  intrinsic  merits.  But  it  may 
also  be  regarded  as  one  manifestation  of  what  is 
called  "  the  spirit  of  the  age. ' '  I  have,  too,  been 
much  impressed  by  a  further  conclusion.  No 
one  doubts  that  the  speculative  movement  affects 
the  social  and  political — I  think  that  less  attention 
has  been  given  to  the  reciprocal  influence.  The 
philosophy  of  a  period  is  often  treated  as  though 
it  were  the  product  of  impartial  and  abstract 
investigation — something  worked  out  by  the 
great  thinker  in  his  study  and  developed  by 
simple  logical  deductions  from  the  positions 
established  by  his  predecessors.  To  my  mind, 
though  I  cannot  now  dwell  upon  the  point,  the 
philosophy  of  an  age  is  in  itself  determined  to  a 
very  great  extent  by  the  social  position.  It  gives 
the  solutions  of  the  problems  forced  upon  the 
reasoner  by  the  practical  conditions  of  his  time. 
To  understand  why  certain  ideas  become  current, 
we  have  to  consider  not  merely  the  ostensible 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  3 

logic  but  all  the  motives  which  led  men  to  in- 
vestigate the  most  pressing  difficulties  suggested 
by  the  social  development.  Obvious  principles 
are  always  ready,  like  germs,  to  come  to  life  when 
the  congenial  soil  is  provided.  And  what  is  true 
of  the  philosophy  is  equally,  and  perhaps  more 
conspicuously,  true  of  the  artistic  and  literary 
embodiment  of  the  dominant  ideas  which  are 
correlated  with  the  social  movement. 

A  recognition  of  the  general  principle  is  implied 
in  the  change  which  has  come  over  the  methods 
of  criticism.  It  has  more  and  more  adopted  the 
historical  attitude.  Critics  in  an  earlier  day  con- 
ceived their  function  to  be  judicial.  They  were 
administering  a  fixed  code  of  laws  applicable  in  all 
times  and  places.  The  true  canons  for  dramatic 
or  epic  poetry,  they  held,  had  been  laid  down 
once  for  all  by  Aristotle  or  his  commentators; 
and  the  duty  of  the  critic  was  to  consider  whether 
the  author  had  infringed  or  conformed  to  the 
established  rules,  and  to  pass  sentence  accordingly. 
I  will  not  say  that  the  modem  critic  has  abandoned 
altogether  that  conception  of  his  duty.  He  seems 
to  me  not  infrequently  to  place  himself  on  the 
judgment-seat  with  a  touch  of  his  old  confidence, 
and  to  sentence  poor  authors  with  sufficient  airs 
of  infallibility.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the  reflection 
that  he  is  representing  not  an  invariable  tradition 


4       English  Literature  and  Society 

but  the  last  new  aesthetic  doctrine,  seems  even  to 
give  additional  keenness  to  his  opinions  and  to 
suggest  no  doubts  of  his  infallibility.  And  yet 
there  is  a  change  in  his  position.  He  admits,  or 
at  any  rate  is  logically  bound  to  admit,  that  the 
code  which  he  administers  requires  modification  in 
different  times  and  places.  The  old  critic  spoke 
like  the  organ  of  an  infallible  Church,  regarding 
all  forms  of  art  except  his  own  as  simply  heretical. 
The  modem  critic  speaks  like  the  liberal  theo- 
logian, who  sees  in  heretical  and  heathen  creeds 
an  approximation  to  the  truth,  and  admits  that 
they  may  have  a  relative  value,  and  even  be  the 
best  fitted  for  the  existing  conditions.  There  are, 
imdoubtedly,  some  principles  of  imiversal  appli- 
cation ;  and  the  old  critics  often  expounded  them 
with  admirable  common-sense  and  force.  But 
like  general  tenets  of  morality,  they  are  apt  to  be 
commonplaces,  whose  specific  application  requires 
knowledge  of  concrete  facts.  When  the  critics 
assumed  that  the  forms  familiar  to  themselves 
were  the  only  possible  embodiments  of  those 
principles,  and  condemned  all  others  as  barbarous, 
they  were  led  to  pass  judgments,  such,  for 
example,  as  Voltaire's  view  of  Dante  and  Shake- 
speare, which  strike  us  as  strangely  crude  and 
unappreciative.  The  change  in  this,  as  in  other 
departments  of  thought,  means  again  that  criti- 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  5 

cism,  as  Professor  Coiirthope  has  said,  must 
become  thoroughly  inductive.  We  must  start 
from  experience.  We  must  begin  by  asking 
impartially  what  pleased  men,  and  then  inquire 
why  it  pleased  them.  We  must  not  decide 
dogmatically  that  it  ought  to  have  pleased  or 
displeased  on  the  simple  ground  that  it  is  or 
is  not  congenial  to  ourselves.  As  historical 
methods  extend,  the  same  change  takes  place  in 
regard  to  political  or  economical  or  religious,  as 
well  as  in  regard  to  literary  investigations.  We 
can  then  become  catholic  enough  to  appreciate 
varying  forms;  and  recognise  that  each  has  its 
own  rules,  right  under  certain  conditions  and 
appropriate  within  the  given  sphere.  The  great 
empire  of  literature,  we  may  say,  has  many 
provinces.  There  is  a  "  law  of  nature ' '  deducible 
from  universal  principles  of  reason  which  is 
applicable  throughout,  and  enforces  what  may 
be  called  the  cardinal  virtues  common  to  all 
forms  of  human  expression.  But  subordinate 
to  this,  there  is  also  a  municipal  law,  varying 
in  every  province  and  determining  the  particular 
systems  which  are  applicable  to  the  different  state 
of  things  existing  in  each  region. 

This  method,  again,  when  carried  out,  implies 
the  necessary  connection  between  the  social  and 
literary  departments  of  history.    The  adequate 


6       English  Literature  and  Society 

criticism  must  be  rooted  in  history.  In  some 
sense  I  am  ready  to  admit  that  all  criticism  is  a 
nuisance  and  a  parasitic  growth  upon  literature. 
The  most  fruitful  reading  is  that  in  which  we  are 
submitting  to  a  teacher  and  asking  no  questions 
as  to  the  secret  of  his  influence,  Bimyan  had 
no  knowledge  of  the  "higher  criticism";  he  read 
into  the  Bible  a  great  many  dogmas  which  were 
not  there,  and  accepted  rather  questionable  his- 
torical data.  But  perhaps  he  felt  some  essen- 
tial characteristics  of  the  book  more  thoroughly 

^  than  far  more  cultivated  people.  No  critic  can 
instil  into  a  reader  that  spontaneous  sympathy 
with  the  thoughts  and  emotions  incarnated  in  the 

I  great  masterpieces  without  which  all  reading  is 
cold  and  valueless.  In  spite  of  all  differences  of 
dialect  and  costume,  the  great  men  can  place 
themselves  in  spiritual  contact  with  men  of  mo«?t 
distant  races  and  periods.  Art,  we  are  told,  is 
immortal;  in  other  words,  is  unprogressive. 
The  great  imaginative  creations  have  not  been 
superseded.  We  go  to  the  last  new  authorities 
for  our  science  and  our  history,  but  the  essential 
thoughts  and  emotions  of  human  beings  were  in- 
carnated long  ago  with  unsurpassable  clearness. 
When  FitzGerald  published  his  Omar  Khayyam, 
readers  were  surprised  to  find  that  an  ancient 
Persian  had  given  utterance  to  thoughts  which  we 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  7 

considered  to  be  characteristic  of  our  own  day. 
They  had  no  call  to  be  surprised.  The  writer 
of  the  Book  of  Job  had  long  before  given  the 
most  forcible  expression  to  thought  which  still 
moves  our  deepest  feelings;  and  Greek  poets 
had  created  imsurpassable  utterance  for  moods 
common  to  all  men  in  all  ages. 

Still  green  with  bays  each  ancient  altar  stands 
Above  the  reach  of  sacrilegious  hands/ 

as  Pope  puts  it;  and  when  one  remembers  how 
through  all  the  centuries  the  masters  of  thought 
and  expression  have  appealed  to  men  who  knew 
nothing  of  criticism,  higher  or  lower,  one  is 
tempted  to  doubt  whether  the  critic  be  not  an 
altogether  superfluous  phenomenon. 

The  critic,  however,  has  become  a  necessity;  [ 
and  has,  I  fancy,  his  justification  in  his  own 
sphere.  Every  great  writer  may  be  regarded  in 
various  aspects.  He  is,  of  course,  an  individual, 
and  the  critic  may  endeavour  to  give  a  psycho- 
logical analysis  of  him;  and  to  describe  his  in- 
tellectual and  moral  constitution  and  detect  the 
secrets  of  his  permanent  influence  without  refer- 
ence to  the  particular  time  and  place  of  his 
appearance.  That  is  an  interesting  problem 
when  the  materials  are  accessible.  But  every 
man  is  also  an   organ  of  the   society  in   which 


8       English  Literature  and  Society 

he  has  been  brought  up.  The  material  upon 
which  he  works  is  the  whole  complex  of  con- 
ceptions, religious,  imaginative,  and  ethical,  which 
forms  his  mental  atmosphere.  That  suggests 
problems  for  the  historian  of  philosophy.  He 
is  also  dependent  upon  what  in  modem  phrase 
we  call  his  "environment" — the  social  struc- 
ture of  which  he  forms  a  part,  and  which 
gives  a  special  direction  to  his  passions  and 
aspirations.  That  suggests  problems  for  the  his- 
torian of  political  and  social  institutions.  Fully 
(to  appreciate  any  great  writer,  therefore,  it 
I  is  necessary  to  distinguish  between  the  charac- 
teristics due  to  the  individual  with  certain  idio- 
syncrasies and  the  characteristics  due  to  his  special 
modification  by  the  existing  stage  of  social  and 
intellectual  development.  In  the  earliest  period 
jthe  discrimination  is  impossible.  Nobody,  I  sup- 
pose, not  even  if  he  be  Provost  of  Oriel,  can 
tell  us  much  of  the  personal  characteristics  of  the 
author — if  there  was  an  author — of  the  Iliad.  He 
must  remain  for  us  a  typical  Greek  of  the  heroic 
age;  though  even  so,  the  attempt  to  realise  the 
corresponding  state  of  society  may  be  of  high 
value  to  an  appreciation  of  the  poetry.  In  later 
times  we  suffer  from  the  opposite  difficulty.  Our 
descendants  will  be  able  to  see  the  general  charac- 
teristics of  the  Victorian  age  better  than  we,  who 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  9 

unconsciously  accept  our  own  peculiarities,  like 
the  air  we  breathe,  as  mere  matters  of  course. 
Meanwhile  a  Tennyson  and  a  Browning  strike  us 
less  as  the  organs  of  a  society  than  by  the  idio- 
syncrasies which  belong  to  them  as  individuals. 
But  in  the  normal  case,  the  relation  of  the  two 
studies  is  obvious.  Dante,  for  example,  is  pro- 
foundly interesting  to  the  psychologist,  considered 
simply  as  a  human  being.  We  are  then  interested 
by  the  astonishing  imaginative  intensity  and 
intellectual  power  and  the  vivid  personality  of  the 
man  who  still  lives  for  us  as  he  lived  in  the  Italy 
of  six  centuries  ago.  But  as  all  competent  critics 
tell  us,  the  Divina  Commedia  also  reveals  in  the 
completest  way  the  essential  spirit  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  two  studies  reciprocally  enlighten 
each  other.  We  know  Dante  and  understand  his 
position  the  more  thoroughly  as  we  know  better 
the  history  of  the  political  and  ecclesiastical 
struggles  in  which  he  took  part,  and  the  philo- 
sophical doctrines  which  he  accepted  and  inter- 
preted ;  and  conversely,  we  understand  the  period 
the  better  when  we  see  how  its  beliefs  and  passions 
affected  a  man  of  abnormal  genius  and  marked 
idiosyncrasy  of  character.  The  historical  revela- 
tion is  the  more  complete,  precisely  because  Dante 
was  not  a  commonplace  or  average  person  but 
a  man  of  imique  force,  mental  and  moral.    The 


lo      English  Literature  and  Society 

remark  may  suggest  what  is  the  special  value  of 
the  literary  criticism  or  its  bearing  upon  history. 
We  may  learn  from  many  sources  what  was  the 
ciirrent  mythology  of  the  day;  and  how  ordinary 
people  believed  in  devils  and  in  a  material  hell 
lying  just  beneath  our  feet.  The  vision  probably 
strikes  us  as  repulsive  and  simply  preposterous. 
If  we  proceed  to  ask  what  it  meant  and  why  it 
had  so  powerful  a  hold  upon  the  men  of  the  day, 
we  may  perhaps  be  innocent  enough  to  apply  to 
the  accepted  philosophers,  especially  to  Aquinas, 
whose  thoughts  had  been  so  thoroughly  assimilated 
by  the  poet.  No  doubt  that  may  suggest  very 
interesting  inquiries  for  the  metaphysician;  but 
we  should  find  not  only  that  the  philosophy  is 
very  tough  and  very  obsolete,  and  therefore  very 
wearisome  for  any  but  the  strongest  intellectual 
appetites,  but  also  that  it  does  not  really  answer 
our  question.  The  philosopher  does  not  give  us 
the  reasons  which  determine  men  to  believe,  but 
the  official  justification  of  their  beliefs  which  has 
been  elaborated  by  the  most  acute  and  laborious 
dialecticians.  The  inquiry  shows  how  a  philo- 
sophical system  can  be  hooked  on  to  an  imagina- 
tive conception  of  the  universe;  but  it  does  not 
give  the  cause  of  the  belief,  only  the  way  in 
which  it  can  be  more  or  less  favourably  combined 
with  abstract  logical  principles.     The  great  poet 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         1 1 

unconsciously  reveals  something  more  than  the 
metaphysician.  His  poetry  does  not  decay  with 
the  philosophy  which  it  took  for  granted.  We 
do  not  ask  whether  his  reasoning  be  sound  or 
false,  but  whether  the  vision  be  sublime  or  repul- 
sive. It  may  be  a  little  of  both ;  but  at  any  rate 
it  is  undeniably  fascinating.  That,  I  take  it,  is 
because  the  imagery  which  he  creates  may  still  be 
a  symbol  of  thoughts  and  emotions  which  are  as 
interesting  now  as  they  were  six  hundred  years 
ago.  This  man  of  first-rate  power  shows  us, 
therefore,  what  was  the  real  charm  of  the  accepted 
beliefs  for  him,  and  less  consciously  for  others. 
He  had  no  doubt  that  their  truth  could  be  proved 
by  syllogising;  but  they  really  laid  so  powerful 
a  grasp  upon  him  because  they  could  be  made  to 
express  the  hopes  and  fears,  the  loves  and  hatreds, 
the  moral  and  political  convictions  which  were 
dearest  to  him.  When  we  see  how  the  system 
could  be  turned  to  account  by  the  most  powerful 
imagination,  we  can  understand  better  what  it 
really  meant  for  the  commonplace  and  ignorant 
monks  who  accepted  it  as  a  mere  matter  of  course. 
We  begin  to  see  what  were  the  great  forces  really 
at  work  below  the  surface;  and  the  issues  which 
were  being  blindly  worked  out  by  the  dumb 
agents  who  were  quite  unable  to  recognise  their 
nature.     If,  in  short,  we  wish  to  discover  the 


12      English  Literature  and  Society 

secret  of  the  great  ecclesiastical  and  political 
struggles  of  the  day,  we  should  turn,  not  to  the 
men  in  whose  minds  beliefs  lie  inert  and  instinc- 
tive, nor  to  the  ostensible  dialectics  of  the  osten- 
sible apologists  and  assailants,  but  to  the  great 
poet  who  shows  how  they  were  associated  with 
the  strongest  passions  and  the  most  vehement 
convictions. 

We  may  hold  that  the  historian  should  confine 
himself  to  giving  a  record  of  the  objective  facts, 
which  can  be  fully  given  in  dates,  statistics,  and 
phenomena  seen  from  outside.  But  if  wo  allow 
ourselves  to  contemplate  a  philosophical  history, 
which  shall  deal  with  the  causes  of  events  and 
aim  at  exhibiting  the  evolution  of  human  society 
— and  perhaps  I  ought  to  apologise  for  even 
suggesting  that  such  an  ordeal  could  ever  be 
realised — we  should  also  see  that  the  history  of 
literature  would  be  a  subordinate  element  of  the 
whole  structure.  The  political,  social,  ecclesias- 
tical, and  economical  factors,  and  their  complex 
actions  and  reactions,  would  all  have  to  be  taken 
into  account,  the  literary  historian  would  be  con- 
cerned with  the  ideas  which  find  utterance  through 
the  poet  and  philosopher,  and  with  the  constitution 
of  the  class  which  at  any  time  forms  the  literary- 
organ  of  the  society.  The  critic  who  deals  with 
the  individual  work  would  find  such  knowledge 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         13 

necessary  to  a  full  appreciation  of  his  subject; 
and,  conversely,  the  appreciation  would  in  some 
degree  help  the  labourer  in  other  departments  of 
history  to  imderstand  the  nature  of  the  forces  which 
are  governing  the  social  development.  However 
far  we  may  be  from  such  a  consummation,  and  re- 
luctant to  indulge  in  the  magniloquent  language  \ 
which  it  suggests,  I  imagine  that  a  literary  history 
is  so  far  satisfactory,  as  it  takes  the  facts  into  con- 
sideration and  regards  literature,  in  the  perhaps  too 
pretentious  phrase,  as  a  particular  function  of  the 
whole  social  organism.  But  I  gladly  descend  from 
such  lofty  speculations  to  come  to  a  few  relevant 
details ;  and  especially,  to  notice  some  of  the  ob- 
vious limitations  which  have  in  any  case  to  be 
accepted. 

And  in  the  first  place,  when  we  try  to  be  philo- 
sophical, we  have  a  difficulty  which  besets  us  in 
political  history.  How  much  influence  is  to  be 
attributed  to  the  individual  ?  Carlyle  used  to 
tell  us  in  my  youth  that  everything  was  due  to 
the  hero;  that  the  whole  course  of  human  history 
depended  upon  your  Cromwell  or  Frederick,  Our 
scientific  teachers  are  inclined  to  reply  that  no 
single  person  had  much  importance,  and  that  an 
ideal  history  could  omit  all  names  of  individuals. 
If,  for  example,  Napoleon  had  been  killed  at  the 
siege  of  Toulon,  the  only  difference  would  have 


14     English  Literature  and  Society 

been  that  the  dictator  would  have  been  called  say 
Moreau.  Possibly,  but  I  cannot  see  that  we  can 
argue  in  the  same  way  in  literature,  I  see  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  if  Shakespeare  had  died 
prematurely,  anybody  else  would  have  written 
Hamlet.  There  was,  it  is  true,  a  butcher's  boy 
at  Stratford,  who  was  thought  by  his  townsmen 
to  have  been  as  clever  a  fellow  as  Shakespeare. 
We  shall  never  know  what  we  have  lost  by  his 
premature  death,  and  we  certainly  cannot  argue 
that  if  Shakespeare  had  died,  the  butcher  would 
have  lived.  It  makes  one  tremble,  says  an  in- 
genious critic,  to  reflect  that  Shakespeare  and 
Cervantes  were  both  liable  to  the  measles  at  the 
same  time.  As  we  know  they  escaped,  we  need 
i  not  make  ourselves  unhappy  about  the  might-have- 
jbeen;  but  the  remark  suggests  how  much  the 
(literary  glory  of  any  period  depends  upon  one  or 
two  great  names.  Omit  Cervantes  and  Shake- 
speare and  Moli^re  from  Spanish,  English,  and 
French  literature,  and  what  a  collapse  of  glory 
would  follow!  Had  Shakespeare  died,  it  is  con- 
ceivable perhaps  that  some  of  these  hyperboles 
which  have  been  lavished  upon  him  would  have 
been  bestowed  on  Marlowe  and  Ben  Jonson. 
But,  on  the  whole,  I  fancy  that  the  minor  lights 
of  the  Elizabethan  drama  have  owed  more  to 
their  contemporary  than  he  owed  to  them;  and 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         15 

that,  if  this  central  sun  had  been  extinguished, 
the  whole  galaxy  would  have  remained  in  com- 
parative obscurity.     Now,  as  we  are  utterly  unable 
to  say  what  are  the  conditions  which  produce  a 
genius,  or  to  point  to  any  automatic  machinery 
which  could  replace  him  in  case  of  accident,  we 
must  agree  that  this  is  an  element  in  the  problem 
which  is  altogether  beyond  scientific  investigation. 
The  literary  historian  must  be  content  with  a 
humble   position.     Still,    the    Elizabethan   stage 
would  have  existed  had  Shakespeare  never  written 
and,  moreover,  its  main  outhne  would  have  been 
the  same.     If  any  man  ever  imitated  and  gave 
full  utterance  to  the  characteristic  ideas  of  his 
contemporaries  it  was  certainly  Shakespeare;  and 
nobody  ever  accepted  more  thoroughly  the  form 
of  art  which  they  worked  out.     So  far,  therefore, 
as  the  general  conditions  of  the  time  led  to  the 
elaboration  of  this  particular  genus,  we  may  study 
them  independently   and  assign  certain  general 
causes.     What  Shakespeare  did  was  to  show  more 
fully  the  way  in  which  that  form  could  be  turned 
to  accoimt;  and,   without  him,   it  would  have 
been  a  far  less  interesting  phenomenon.     Even 
the  greatest  man  has  to  live  in  his  own  century. 
The  deepest  thinker  is  not  really — though  we  often 
use  the  phrase — in  advance  of  his  day  so  much  as 
in  the  line  along  which  advance  takes  place.    The 


1 6     English  Literature  and  Society 

greatest  poet  does  not  write  for  a  future  genera- 
tion in  the  sense  of  not  writing  for  his  own;  it 
is  only  that  in  giving  the  fullest  utterance  to  its 
thoughts  and  showing  the  deepest  insight  into  their 
significance,  he  is  therefore  the  most  perfect  type 
of  its  general  mental  attitude,  and  his  work  is  an 
embodiment  of  the  thoughts  which  are  common 
to  men  of  all  generations. 

When  the  critic  began  to  perceive  that  many 
forms  of  art  might  be  equally  legitimate  imder 
different  conditions,  his  first  proceeding  was  to 
classify  them  in  different  schools.  English  poets, 
for  example,  were  arranged  by  Pope  and  Gray 
as  followers  of  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Donne,  Dryden, 
and  so  forth;  and,  in  later  days,  we  have  such 
literary  genera  as  are  indicated  by  the  names 
"classic" and  "romantic" or  "realist"  and  "idealist," 
covering  characteristic  tendencies  of  the  various 
historical  groups.  The  fact  that  literary  produc- 
tions fall  into  schools  is  of  course  obvious,  and 
suggests  the  problem  as  to  the  cause  of  their  rise 
and  decline.  Bagehot  treats  the  question  in  his 
Physics  and  Politics.  Why,  he  asks,  did  there  arise 
a  special  literary  school  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne — "a  marked  variety  of  human  expression, 
producing  what  was  then  written  and  peculiar  to 
it"?  Some  eminent  writer,  he  replies,  gets  a 
start  by  a  style  congenial  to  the  minds  around 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  17 

him.  Steele,  a  rough,  vigorous,  forward  man, 
struck  out  the  periodical  essay;  Addison,  a  wise, 
meditative  man,  improved  and  carried  it  to  per- 
fection. An  unconscious  mimicry  is  always  pro- 
ducing countless  echoes  of  an  original  writer. 
That,  I  take  it,  is  undeniably  true.  Nobody  can 
doubt  that  all  authors  are  in  some  degree  echoes, 
and  that  a  vast  majority  are  never  anything  else. 
But  it  does  not  answer  why  a  particular  form 
should  be  fruitful  of  echoes  or,  in  Bagehot's  words 
be  "more  congenial  to  the  minds  around."  Why 
did  the  Spectator  suit  one  generation  and  the 
Rambler  its  successors  ?  Are  we  incapable  of 
giving  any  answer  ?  Are  changes  in  literary  fash- 
ions enveloped  in  the  same  inscrutable  mystery 
as  changes  in  ladies'  dresses?  It  is,  and  no  doubt 
always  will  be,  impossible  to  say  why  at  one  period 
garments  should  spread  over  a  hoop  and  at  another 
cling  to  the  limbs.  Is  it  equally  impossible  to 
say  why  the  fashion  of  Pope  should  have  been 
succeeded  by  the  fashion  of  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge?  If  we  were  prepared  to  admit  the 
doctrine  of  which  I  have  spoken — the  supreme 
importance  of  the  individual — that  would  of 
course  be  all  that  could  be  said.  Shakespeare's 
successors  are  explained  as  imitators  of  Shake- 
speare, and  Shakespeare  is  explained  by  his 
"  genius ' '  or,  in  other  words,  is  inexplicable.    If,  on 


1 8     English  Literature  and  Society 

the  other  hand,  Shakespeare's  originality,  what- 
ever it  may  have  been,  was  shown  by  his  power 
of  interpreting  the  thoughts  of  his  own  age,  then 
we  can  learn  something  from  studying  the  social 
and  intellectual  position  of  his  contemporaries. 
Though  the  individual  remains  inexplicable,  the 
general  characteristics  of  the  school  to  which  he 
belongs  may  be  tolerably  intelligible;  and  some 
explanation  is  in  fact  suggested  by  such  epithets, 
for  example,  as  "romantic"  and  "classical."  For, 
whatever  precisely  they  mean, — and  I  confess  to 
my  mind  the  question  of  what  they  mean  is  often 
a  very  difficult  one, — they  imply  some  general 
tendency  which  cannot  be  attributed  to  individual 
influence.  When  we  endeavoiir  to  approach  this 
problem  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  literary  schools, 
we  see  that  it  is  a  case  of  a  phenomenon  which 
is  very  often  noticed  and  which  we  are  more 
ready  to  explain  in  proportion  to  the  share  of 
youthful  audacity  which  we  are  fortunate  enough 
to  possess. 

In  every  form  of  artistic  production,  in  painting 
and  architecture,  for  example,  schools  arise ;  each 
of  which  seems  to  embody  some  kind  of  principle, 
and  develops  and  afterwards  decays,  according 
to  some  mysterious  law.  It  may  resemble  the 
animal  species  which  is,  somehow  or  other,  de- 
veloped and  then  stamped  out  in  the  struggle  of 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         19 

existence  by  the  growth  of  a  form  more  appro- 
priate to  the  new  order.     The  epic  poem,  shall  we 
say?  is  like  the  "monstrous  efts,"  as  Tennyson 
unkindly  calls  them,  which  were  no  doubt  very 
estimable  creatures  in  their  day,  but  have  some- 
how been  unable  to  adapt  themselves  to  recent 
geological  epochs.     Why  men  could  build  cathe- 
drals in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  why  their  power] 
was  lost  instead  of  steadily  developing  like  the  art 
of  engineering,  is  a  problem  which  has  occupied 
many  writers,  and  of  which  I  shall  not  attempt 
to  offer  a  solution.    That  is  the  difference  between 
artistic   and   scientific   progress,     A   truth   oncel 
discovered  remains  true  and  may  form  the  nucleus  \ 
of  an  independently  interesting  body  of  truths.  { 
But  a  special  form  of  art  flourishes  only  during 
a  limited  period,  and  when  it  decays  and  is  suc- 
ceeded by  others,  we  cannot  say  that  there  i 
necessarily  progress,  only  that  for  some  reason  o; 
other  the  environment  has  become  uncongenial. 
It  is,  of  course,  tempting  to  infer  from  the  decay 
of  an  art  that  there  must  be  a  corresponding 
decay  in  the  vitality  and  morality  of  the  race. 
Ruskin,  for  example,  always  assumed  in  his  most 
brilliant  and  incisive,  but  not  very  conclusive, 
arguments  that  men  ceased  to  paint  good  pictures 
simply  because  they  ceased  to  be  good  men.     He 
did  not  proceed  to  prove  that  the  moral  decline 


20     English  Literature  and  Society 

really  took  place,  and  still  less  to  show  why  it  took 
place.  But,  without  attacking  these  large  pro- 
blems, I  shall  be  content  to  say  that  I  do  not  see 
that  any  such  sweeping  conclusions  can  be  made 
as  to  the  kind  of  changes  in  literary  forms  with 
j which  we  shall  be  concerned.  That  there  is  a 
!  close  relation  between  the  literature  and  the  gener- 
al social  condition  of  a  nation  is  my  own  con- 
tention. But  the  relation  is  hardly  of  this  simple 
kind.  Nations,  it  seems  to  me,  have  got  on 
remarkably  well,  and  made  not  only  material  but 
political  and  moral  progress  in  the  periods  when 
they  have  written  few  books,  and  those  bad  ones ; 
and,  conversely,  have  produced  some  admirable 
literature  while  they  were  developing  some  very 
ugly  tendencies.  To  say  the  truth,  literature 
seems  to  me  to  be  a  kind  of  by-product.  It 
occupies  far  too  small  a  part  in  the  whole  activity 
of  a  nation,  even  of  its  intellectual  activity,  to 
serve  as  a  complete  indication  of  the  many  forces 
which  are  at  work,  or  as  an  adequate  moral  baro- 
meter of  the  general  moral  state.  The  attempt 
to  establish  such  a  condition  too  closely,  seems 
to  me  to  lead  to  a  good  many  very  edifying  but 
not  the  less  fallacious  conclusions. 

The  succession  of  literary  species  implies  that 
some  are  always  passing  into  the  stage  of  "  sur- 
vivals":  and   the   most   obvioiis    course    is   to 


In  the  Eighteenth  Country         21 

endeavour  to  associate  them,  with  the  general 
philosophical  movement.  That  suggests  one  ob- 
vious explanation  of  many  literary  develop- 
ments. The  great  thriving  times  of  literature 
have  occurred  when  new  intellectual  horizons 
seemed  to  be  suddenly  opening  upon  the  human 
intelligence;  as  when  Bacon  was  taking  his 
Pisgah  sight  of  the  promised  land  of  science, 
and  Shakespeare  and  Spenser  were  making  new 
conquests  in  the  world  of  the  poetic  imagination. 
A  great  intellectual  shock  was  stimulating  the 
parallel,  though  independent,  outbursts  of  activity. 
The  remark  may  suggest  one  reason  for  the 
decline  as  well  as  for  the  rise  of  the  new  genus. 
If,  on  the  one  hand,  the  man  of  genius  is 
especially  sensitive  to  the  new  ideas  which  are 
stirring  the  world,  it  is  also  necessary  that  he 
should  be  in  sympathy  with  his  hearers — that  he 
should  talk  the  language  which  they  understand, 
and  adopt  the  traditions,  conventions,  and  sym- 
bols with  which  they  are  already  more  or  less 
familiar.  A  generally  accepted  tradition  is  as 
essential  as  the  impulse  which  comes  from  the 
influx  of  new  ideas.  But  the  happy  balance  which 
enables  the  new  wine  to  be  put  into  the  old 
bottles  is  precarious  and  transitory.  The  new 
ideas  as  they  develop  may  become  paralysing 
to  the  imagery  which  they  began  by  utilising. 


22     English  Literature  and  Society 

The  legends  of  chivalry  which  Spenser  turned  to 
account  became  ridiculous  in  the  next  generation, 
and  the  mythology  of  Milton's  great  poem  was 
incredible   or  revolting  to  his   successors.     The 
machinery,  in  the  old  phrase,  of  a  poet  becomes 
obsolete,  though  when  he  used  it,  it  had  vitality 
enough    to    be    a    vehicle    for    his    ideas.     The 
imitative  tendency  described  by  Bagehot  clearly 
tends  to  preserve  the  old,  as  much  as  to  facilitate 
the  adoption  of  a  new  form.     In  fact,  to  create 
a  really  original  and  new  form  seems  to  exceed 
the  power  of  any  individual,  and  the  greatest  men 
must  desire  to  speak  to  their  own  contemporaries. 
It  is  only  by  degrees  that  the  inadequacy  of  the 
traditional  form  makes  itself  felt,  and  its  successor 
has  to  be   worked  out  by  a  series  of  tentative 
experiments.     When  a  new  style  has  established 
itself  its  representatives  hold  that  the  orthodoxy 
of  the  previous  period  was  a  gross  superstition; 
and  those  who  were  condemned  as  heretics  were 
really  prophets  of  the  true  faith,  not  yet  revealed. 
However  that  may  be,  I  am  content  at  present 
to   say   that   in   fact   the   development   of  new 
literary  types    is   discontinuous,   and  implies   a 
compromise   between   the   two   conditions  which 
in    literature    correspond    to    conservatism    and 
radicalism.     The    conservative   work   is   apt   to 
become  a  mere  survival;  while  the  radical  may 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         23 

include  much  that  has  the  crudity  of  an  imperfect 
application  of  new  principles.  Another  point 
may  be  briefly  indicated.  The  growth  of  new/ 
forms  is  obviously  connected  not  only  with  the 
intellectual  development  but  with  the  social  and 
political  state  of  the  nation,  and  there  comes 
into  close  connection  with  other  departments  of 
history.  Authors,  so  far  as  I  have  noticed,  gen- 
erally write  with  a  view  to  being  read.  More- 
over, the  reading  class  is  at  most  times  a  very 
small  part  of  the  population.  A  philosopher,  I 
take  it,  might  think  himself  unusually  popular 
if  his  name  were  known  to  a  hundredth  part  of 
the  population.  But  even  poets  and  novelists 
might  sometimes  be  surprised  if  they  could  realise 
the  small  impression  they  make  upon  the  mass 
of  the  population.  There  is,  you  know,  a  story 
of  how  Thackeray,  when  at  the  height  of  his 
reputation  he  stood  for  Oxford,  found  that  his 
name  was  unknown  even  to  highly  respectable 
constituents.  The  author  of  Vanity  Fair,  they 
observed,  was  named  John  Bunyan.  At  the 
present  day  the  number  of  readers  has,  I  presume, 
enormously  increased ;  but  authors  who  can  reach 
the  lower  strata  of  the  great  lower  pyramid,  which 
widens  so  rapidly  at  its  base,  are  few  indeed. 
The  characteristics  of  a  literature  correspond  to 
the  national  characteristics,  as  embodied  in  the 


24     English  Literature  and  Society 

characteristics  of  a  very  small  minority  of  the 
nation.  Two  centuries  ago  the  reading  part  of 
the  nation  was  mainly  confined  to  London  and 
to  certain  classes  of  society.  The  most  important 
changes  which  have  taken  place  have  been  closely 
connected  with  the  social  changes  w^hich  have 
entirely  altered  the  limits  of  the  reading  class; 
and  with  the  changes  of  belief  which  have  been 
cause  and  effect  of  the  most  conspicuous  political 
changes.  That  is  too  obvious  to  require  any 
further  exposition.  Briefly,  in  talking  of  literary 
changes,  considered  as  implied  in  the  whole  social 
development,  I  shall  have,  first,  to  take  note  of 
the  main  intellectual  characteristics  of  the  period ; 
and  secondly,  what  changes  took  place  in  the 
audience  to  which  men  of  letters  addressed 
themselves,  and  how  the  gradual  extension  of 
the  reading  class  affected  the  development  of 
the  literature  addressed  to  them. 

I  hope  and  believe  that  I  have  said  nothing 
original.  I  have  certainly  only  been  attempting 
to  express  the  views  which  are  accepted,  in  their 
general  outline  at  least,  by  historians,  whether  of 
the  political  or  literary  kind.  They  have  often 
been  applied  very  forcibly  to  the  various  liter- 
ary developments,  and,  by  way  of  preface  to 
my  owTi  special  topic,  I  will  venture  to  recall 
one  chapter  of  literary  history  which  may  serve 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         25 

to  illustrate  what  I  have  already  said,  and  which 
has  a  bearing  upon  what  I  shall  have  to  say 
hereafter. 

One  of  the  topics  upon  which  the  newer  methods 
of  criticism  first  displayed  their  power  was  the 
school  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists.  Many  of  the 
earlier  critics  wrote  like  lovers  or  enthusiasts  who 
exalted  the  merits  of  some  of  the  old  playwrights 
beyond  our  sober  judgments,  and  were  inclined 
to  ignore  the  merits  of  other  forms  of  the  art. 
But  we  have  come  to  recognise  that  the  Eliza- 
bethans had  their  faults,  and  that  the  best  apology 
for  their  weaknesses  as  well  as  the  best  explana- 
tion of  their  merits  was  to  be  found  in  a  clearer 
appreciation  of  the  whole  conditions.  It  is  im- 
possible of  course  to  overlook  the  connection 
between  that  great  outburst  of  literary  activity 
and  the  general  movement  of  the  time;  of  the 
period  when  many  impulses  were  breaking  up  the 
old  intellectual  stagnation,  and  when  the  national 
spirit  which  took  the  great  Queen  for  its  repre- 
sentative was  finding  leaders  in  the  Burleighs 
and  Raleighs  and  Drakes.  The  connection  is 
emphasised  by  the  singular  brevity  of  the  literary 
efflorescence.  Marlowe's  Tamburlaine  heralded  its 
approach  on  the  eve  of  the  Spanish  Armada; 
Shakespeare,  to  whom  the  lead  speedily  fell,  had 
shown    his    highest    power    in    Henry   IV.    and 


26     English  Literature  and  Society 

Hamlet  before  the  accession  of  James  I.;  his 
great  tragedies  Othello,  Macbeth,  and  Lear  were 
produced  in  the  next  two  or  three  years;  and  by 
that  time,  Ben  Jonson  had  done  his  best  work. 
When  Shakespeare  retired  in  1611,  Chapman  and 
Webster,  two  of  the  most  brilliant  of  his  rivals, 
had  also  done  their  best;  and  Fletcher  inherited 
the  dramatic  throne.  On  his  death  in  1625, 
Massinger  and  Ford  and  other  minor  luminaries 
were  still  at  work;  but  the  great  period  had 
passed.  It  had  begun  with  the  repulse  of  the 
Armada  and  culminated  some  fifteen  years  later. 
If  in  some  minor  respects  there  may  afterwards 
have  been  an  advance,  the  spontaneous  vigour 
had  declined  and  deliberate  attempts  to  be 
striking  had  taken  the  place  of  the  old  audacity. 
There  can  be  no  more  remarkable  instance  of 
a  curious  phenomenon,  of  a  volcanic  outburst 
of  literary  energy  which  begins  and  reaches  its 
highest  intensity  while  a  man  is  passing  from 
youth  to  middle  age,  and  then  begins  to  decay 
and  exhaust  itself  within  a  generation. 

A  popular  view  used  to  throw  the  responsibility 
upon  the  wicked  Puritans  who  used  their  power 
to  close  the  theatres.  We  entered  the  "prison- 
house"  of  Puritanism,  says  Matthew  Arnold,  I 
think,  and  stayed  there  for  a  couple  of  centuries. 
If  so,  the  gaolers  must  have  had  some  difficulty, 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         27 

for  the  Puritan  (in  the  narrower  sense,  of  course) 
has  always  been  in  a  small  and  unpopular 
minority.  But  it  is  also  plain  that  the  decay  had 
begun  when  the  Puritan  was  the  victim  instead 
of  the  inflictor  of  persecution.  When  we  note 
the  synchronism  'between  the  political  and  the 
literary  movement  our  conception  of  the  true 
nsiture  of  the  change  has  to  be  modified.  The 
accession  of  James  marks  the  time  at  which  the 
struggle  between  the  court  and  the  popular  party 
was  beginning  to  develop  itself;  when  the 
monarchy  and  its  adherents  cease  to  represent 
the  strongest  current  of  national  feeling,  and  the 
bulk  of  the  most  vigorous  and  progressive  classes 
have  become  alienated  and  are  developing  the 
conditions  and  passions  which  produced  the  Civil 
War.  The  genuine  Puritans  are  still  an  exception ; 
they  form  only  the  left  wing,  the  most  thorough- 
going opponents  of  the  court  policy ;  and  their  tri- 
umph afterwards  is  due  only  to  the  causes  which 
in  a  revolution  give  the  advantage  to  the  un- 
compromising partisans,  though  their  special  creed 
is  always  regarded  with  aversion  by  a  majority. 
But  for  the  time,  they  are  the  van  of  the  party 
which,  for  whatever  reason,  is  gathering  strength 
and  embodying  the  main  political  and  ecclesiastical 
impulses  of  the  time.  The  stage,  again,  had  been 
from  the  first  essentially  aristocratic ;  it  depended 


28      English  Literature  and  Society 

upon  the  court  and  the  nobility  and  their 
adherents,  and  was  hostile  both  to  the  Puritans 
and  to  the  whole  class  in  which  the  Puritan  found 
a  congenial  element.  So  long,  as  in  Elizabeth's 
time,  as  the  class  which  supported  the  stage  also 
represented  the  strongest  aspirations  of  the  period 
and  a  marked  national  sentiment,  the  drama  could 
embody  a  marked  national  sentiment.  When  the 
unity  was  broken  up  and  the  court  is  opposed  to 
the  strongest  current  of  political  sentiment,  the 
players  still  adhere  to  their  patron.  The  drama 
icomes  to  represent  a  tone  of  thought,  a  social 
stratvmi,  which,  instead  of  leading,  is  getting 
more  and  more  opposed  to  the  great  bulk  of  the 
most  vigorous  elements  of  the  society.  The  stage 
lis  ceasing  to  be  a  truly  national  organ,  and  begins 
/  to  suit  itself  to  the  tastes  of  the  imprincipled  and 
/  servile  courtiers,  who,  if  they  are  not  more  im- 
moral than  their  predecessors,  are  without  the  old 
I  heroic  touch  which  ennobled  even  the  audacious 
'  and  unscrupulous  adventurers  of  the  Armada 
period.  That  is  to  say,  the  change  is  beginning 
which  became  palpable  in  the  Restoration  time 
when  the  stage  became  simply  the  melancholy 
dependent  upon  the  court  of  Charles  II.,  and 
faithfully  reflected  the  peculiar  morality  of  the 
small  circle  over  which  it  presided.  Without 
taking  into  account  this  process  by  which  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         29 

organ  of  the  nation  gradually  became  trans- 
formed into  the  organ  of  the  class  which  was 
entirely  alienated  from  the  general  body  of  the 
nation,  it  is,  I  think,  impossible  to  understand 
clearly  the  transformation  of  the  drama.  It 
illustrates  the  necessity  of  accoimting  for  the 
literary  movement,  not  only  by  intellectual  and 
general  causes,  but  by  noting  how  special  social 
developments  radically  alter  the  relation  of  any 
particular  literary  genus  to  the  general  national 
movement.  I  shall  soon  have  to  refer  to  the 
case  again. 

I  have  now  only  to  say  briefly  what  I  propose 
to  attempt  in  these  lectures.  The  literary  history, 
as  I  conceive  it,  is  an  account  of  one  strand,  so  to 
speak,  in  a  very  complex  tissue;  it  is  connected 
with  the  intellectual  and  social  development;  it 
represents  movements  of  thought  which  may 
sometimes  check  and  be  sometimes  propitious; 
to  the  existing  forms  of  art;  it  is  the  utterance! 
of  a  class  which  may  represent,  or  fail  to  repre-| 
sent,  the  main  national  movement;  it  is  affected 
more  or  less  directly  by  all  manner  of  religious 
political,  social,  and  economical  changes;  and  it; 
is  dependent  upon  the  occurrence  of  individual! 
genius  for  which  we  cannot  even  profess  tol 
account,  I  propose  to  take  the  history  of 
English  literature  in  the  eighteenth  century.     I 


30     English  Literature  and  Society 

do  not  aim  at  originality;  I  take  for  granted 
the  ordinary  critical  judgments  upon  the  great 
writers  of  whom  so  much  has  been  said  by 
judges  certainly  more  competent  than  myself, 
and  shall  recall  the  same  facts  both  of  ordinary 
history  and  of  the  history  of  thought.  What  I 
hope  is,  that  by  bringing  familiar  facts  together 
I  may  be  able  to  bring  out  the  nature  of  the 
connection  between  them ;  and,  little  as  I  can  say 
that  will  be  at  all  new,  to  illustrate  one  point  of 
view,  which,  as  I  believe,  it  is  desirable  that 
literary  histories  should  take  into  account  more 
distinctly  than  they  have  generally  done. 


n 


THE  first  period  of  which  I  am  to  speak  repre- 
sents to  the  poHtical  historian  the  Avatar  of 
Whiggism.  The  glorious  revolution  has  decided 
the  long  struggle  of  the  previous  century;  the 
main  outlines  of  the  British  Constitution  are 
irrevocably  determined;  the  political  system  is 
in  harmony  with  the  great  political  forces,  and 
the  nation  has  settled,  as  Carlyle  is  fond  of 
saying,  with  the  centre  of  gravity  lowest,  and 
therefore  in  a  position  of  stable  equilibriimi. 
For  another  century  no  organic  change  was 
attempted  or  desired.  Parliament  has  become 
definitely  the  great  driving-wheel  of  the  political 
machinery ;  not,  as  a  century  before,  an  intrusive 
body  acting  spasmodically  and  hampering  instead 
of  regulating  the  executive  power  of  the  Crown. 
The  last  Stuart  kings  had  still  fancied  that  it 
might  be  reduced  to  impotence,  and  the  illusion 
had  been  fostered  by  the  loyalty  which  meant 
at  least  a  fair  unequivocal  desire  to  hold  to  the 
old  monarchical  traditions.  But,  in  fact,  parlia- 
mentary control  had  been   silently  developing; 

31 


32     English  Literature  and  Society 

the  House  of  Commons  had  been  getting  the 
power  of  the  purse  more  distinctly  into  its  hands, 
and  had  taken  very  good  care  not  to  trust  the 
Crown  with  the  power  of  the  sword.  Charles  II. 
had  been  forced  to  depend  on  the  help  of  the 
great  French  monarchy  to  maintain  his  authority 
at  home;  and  when  his  successor  turned  out  to 
be  an  anachronism,  and  found  that  the  loyalty  of 
the  nation  would  not  bear  the  strain  of  a  policy 
hostile  to  the  strongest  national  impulses,  he  was 
thrown  off  as  an  intolerable  incubus.  The  system 
which  had  been  growing  up  beneath  the  surface 
was  now  definitely  put  into  shape  and  its  funda- 
mental principles  embodied  in  legislation .  The  one 
thing  still  needed  was  to  work  out  the  system  of 
party  government,  which  meant  that  Parliament 
should  become  an  organised  body  with  a  corporate 
body,  which  the  ministers  of  the  Crown  had  first 
to  consult  and  then  to  obey.  The  essential  parts 
of  the  system  had,  in  fact,  been  established  by 
the  end  of  Queen  Anne's  reign;  though  the 
change  which  had  taken  place  in  the  system  was 
not  fully  recognised  because  marked  by  the  re- 
tention of  the  old  forms.  This,  broadly  speaking, 
meant  the  supremacy  of  the  class  which  really 
controlled  Parliament ;  of  the  aristocratic  class,  led 
by  the  peers  but  including  the  body  of  squires  and 
landed  gentlemen,  and  including  also  a  growing 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         33 

infusion  of  "moneyed"  men,  who  represented 
the  rising  commercial  and  manufacturing  inter- 
ests. The  division  between  Whig  and  Tory  corre- 
sponded mainly  to  the  division  between  the  men 
who  inclined  mainly  to  the  Church  and  squire- 
archy and  those  who  inclined  towards  the  mer- 
cantile and  the  dissenting  interests.  If  the  Tory 
professed  zeal  for  the  monarchy,  he  did  not 
mean  a  monarchy  as  opposed  to  Parliament  and 
therefore  to  his  own  dearest  privileges.  Even  the 
Jacobite  movement  was  in  great  part  personal, 
or  meant  dislike  to  Hanover  with  no  preference 
for  arbitrary  power,  while  the  actual  monarchy 
was  so  far  controlled  by  Parliament  that  the 
Whig  had  no  desire  to  limit  it  further.  It  was 
a  useful  instrument,  not  an  encumbrance. 

We  have  to  ask  how  these  conditions  affect 
the  literary  position.  One  point  is  clear.  The 
relation  between  the  political  and  the  literary 
class  was  at  this  time  closer  than  it  had  ever 
been.  The  alliance  between  them  marks,  in  fact, 
a  most  conspicuous  characteristic  of  the  time.  It 
was  the  one  period,  as  authors  repeat  with  a  fond 
regret,  in  which  literary  merit  was  recognised  by 
the  distributors  of  State  patronage.  This  gratify- 
ing phenomenon  has,  I  think,  been  often  a  little 
misinterpreted,  and  I  must  consider  briefly  what 
it    really  meant.      And    first    let  us  note  how 


34     English  Literature  and  Society 

exclusively  the  literary  society  of  the  time  was 
confined  to  London,  The  great  town — it  would 
be  even  now  a  great  town — had  half  a  million  in- 
habitants. Macaulay,  in  his  admirably  graphic 
description  of  the  England  of  the  preceding 
period,  points  out  what  a  chasm  divided  it  from 
country  districts ;  what  miserable  roads  had  to  be 
traversed  by  the  nobleman's  chariot  and  four,  or 
by  the  ponderous  waggons  or  strings  of  pack- 
horses  which  supplied  the  wants  of  trade  and  of 
the  humbler  traveller;  and  how  the  squire  only 
emerged  at  intervals  to  be  jeered  and  jostled  as  an 
imcouth  rustic  in  the  streets  of  London.  He  was 
not  a  great  buyer  of  books.  There  were,  of 
course,  libraries  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and 
here  and  there  in  the  house  of  a  rich  prelate  or  of 
one  of  the  great  noblemen  who  were  beginning  to 
form  some  of  the  famous  collections;  but  the 
squire  was  more  than  usually  cultivated  if  Ba- 
ker's Chronicle  and  Gwillim's  Heraldry  lay  on  the 
window-seat  of  his  parlour,  and  one  has  often  to 
wonder  how  the  learned  divines  of  the  period 
managed  to  get  the  books  from  which  they  quote 
so  freely  in  their  discourses.  Anyhow  the  author 
of  the  day  must  have  felt  that  the  circulation  of 
his  books  must  be  mainly  confined  to  London 
and  certainly  in  London  alone  could  he  meet  with 
anything  that  could  pass  for  literary  society  or  an 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         35 

appreciative  audience.  We  have  superabundant 
descriptions  of  the  audience  and  its  meeting- 
places.  One  of  the  familiar  features  of  the  day, 
we  know,  was  the  number  of  coffee-houses.  In 
1657,  we  are  told,  the  first  coffee-house  had  been 
prosecuted  as  a  nuisance.  In  1708,  there  were 
three  thousand  coffee-houses;  and  each  coffee- 
house had  its  habitual  circle.  There  were  coffee- 
houses frequented  by  merchants  and  stock-jobbers 
carrying  on  the  game  which  suggested  the  new 
nickname  bulls  and  bears;  and  coffee-houses 
where  the  talk  was  Whig  and  Tory,  of  the  last 
election  and  change  of  ministry;  and  literary 
resorts  such  as  the  Grecian,  where,  as  we  are  told, 
a  fatal  duel  was  provoked  by  a  dispute  over  a 
Greek  accent,  in  which,  let  us  hope,  it  was  the 
worst  scholar  who  was  killed ;  and  Will's,  where 
Pope  as  a  boy  went  to  look  reverently  at  Dryden ; 
and  Buttons',  where,  at  a  later  period,  Addison 
met  his  little  senate.  Addison,  according  to 
Pope,  spent  five  or  six  hours  a  day  lounging  at 
Buttons' ;  while  Pope  foimd  the  practice  and  the 
consequent  consumption  of  wine  too  much  for  his 
health.  Thackeray  notices  how  the  club  and  coffee- 
house "  boozing  shortened  the  lives  and  enlarged 
the  waistcoats  of  the  men  of  those  days. ' '  The 
coffee-house  implied  the  club,  while  the  club  meant 
simply  an  association  for  periodical  gatherings. 


36      English  Literature  and  Society 

It  was  only  by  degrees  that  the  body  made 
a  permanent  lodgment  in  the  house  and  became 
first  the  tenants  of  the  landlord  and  then  them- 
selves the  proprietors.  The  most  famous  show 
the  approximation  between  the  statesmen  and  the 
men  of  letters.  There  was  the  great  Kit-Kat  Club, 
of  which  Tonson  the  bookseller  was  secretary; 
to  which  belonged  noble  dukes  and  all  the  Whig 
aristocracy,  besides  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  Addi- 
son, Garth,  and  Steele.  It  not  only  brought 
Whigs  together  but  showed  its  taste  by  giving  a 
prize  for  good  comedies.  Swift,  when  he  came 
into  favour,  helped  to  form  the  Brothers'  Club, 
which  was  especially  intended  to  direct  patronage 
towards  promising  writers  of  the  Tory  persuasion. 
The  institution,  in  modem  slang,  differentiated 
as  time  went  on.  The  more  aristocratic  clubs 
became  exclusive  societies,  occupying  their  own 
houses,  more  devoted  to  gambling  than  to  litera- 
ture; while  the  older  type,  represented  by  Jon- 
son's  famous  club,  were  composed  of  literary  and 
professional  classes. 

The  characteristic  fraternisation  of  the  poli- 
ticians and  the  authors  facilitated  by  this  system 
leads  to  the  critical  point.  When  we  speak  of 
the  nobility  patronising  literature,  a  reserve  must 
be  made.  A  list  of  some  twenty  or  thirty  names 
has  been  made  out,  including  all  the  chief  authors 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         37 

of  the  time,  who  received  appointments  of  various 
kinds.  But  I  can  only  find  two,  Congreve  and 
Rowe,  upon  whom  offices  were  bestowed  simply 
as  rewards  for  literary  distinction;  and  both  of 
them  were  sound  Whigs,  rewarded  by  their  party, 
though  not  for  party  services.  The  typical 
patron  of  the  day  was  Charles  Montagu,  Lord 
Halifax.  As  member  of  a  noble  family  he  came 
into  Parliament,  where  he  distinguished  himself 
by  his  financial  achievements  in  founding  the 
Bank  of  England  and  reforming  the  currency, 
and  became  a  peer  and  a  member  of  the  great 
Whig  junto.  At  college  he  had  been  a  chimi 
of  Prior,  who  joined  him  in  a  literary  squib 
directed  against  Dryden,  and,  as  he  rose,  he 
employed  his  friend  in  diplomacy.  But  the 
poetry  by  which  Prior  is  known  to  us  was  of  a 
later  growth,  and  was  clearly  not  the  cause  but 
the  consequence  of  his  preferment.  At  a  later 
time,  Halifax  sent  Addison  abroad  with  the 
intention  of  employing  him  in  a  similar  way; 
and  it  is  plain  that  Addison  was  not — as  the 
familiar  but  obviously  distorted  anecdote  tells  us 
— preferred  on  account  of  his  brilliant  Gazette  in 
rhyme,  but  really  in  fulfilment  of  his  patron's 
virtual  pledge.  Halifax  has  also  the  credit  of 
bestowing  office  upon  Newton  and  patronising 
Congreve.    As    poet    and    patron    Halifax    was 


38     English  Literature  and  Society 

carrying  on  a  tradition.  The  aristocracy  in 
Charles's  days  had  been  under  the  impression  that 
poetry,  or  at  least  verse  writing,  was  becoming  an 
accomplishment  for  a  nobleman.  Pope's  "  mob  of 
gentlemen  who  wrote  with  ease,"  Rochester  and 
Buckingham,  Dorset  and  Sedley,  and  the  like, 
managed  some  very  clever,  if  not  very  exalted, 
performances  and  were  courted  by  the  men  of 
letters  represented  by  Butler,  Dryden,  and  Otway. 
As,  indeed,  the  patrons  were  themselves  hangers- 
on  of  a  thoroughly  corrupt  court,  seeking  to  rise 
by  court  intrigues,  their  patronage  was  apt  to 
be  degrading  and  involved  the  mean  flattery  of 
personal  dependence.  The  change  at  the  Revolu- 
tion meant  that  the  court  no  longer  overshadowed 
society.  The  court,  that  is,  was  beginning  to  be 
superseded  by  the  town.  The  new  race  of  states- 
men were  coming  to  depend  upon  parliamentary 
influence  instead  of  court  favour.  They  were 
comparatively,  therefore,  shining  by  their  own 
light.  They  were  able  to  dispose  of  public 
appointments;  places  on  the  various  commis- 
sions which  had  been  founded  as  Parliament  took 
control  of  the  financial  system — such  as  commis- 
sions for  the  wine-duties,  for  licensing  hackney 
coaches,  excise  duties,  and  so  forth — besides  some 
of  the  other  places  which  had  formerly  been  the 
perquisites  of  the  courtier.     They  could  reward 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         39 

personal  dependants  at  the  cost  of  the  public 
which  was  convenient  for  both  parties.     Promis- 
ing university  students,  like  Prior  and  Addison, 
might  be  brought   out  under  the   wing  of  the 
statesman,  and  no  doubt  literary  merit,  especially 
in    conjunction    with    the    right   politics,    might 
recommend   them  to   such   men   as   Halifax  or 
Somers.     The  political  power  of  the  press  was 
meanwhile    rapidly    developing,     Harley,    Lord 
Oxford,  was  one  of  the  first  to  appreciate  its 
importance.     He   employed    De  Foe   and   other 
humble  writers  who  belonged  to  Grub  Street — 
that  is,  to  professional  journalism  in  its  infancy — 
as  well  as   Swift,   whose  pamphlets  struck  the 
heaviest  blow  at  the  Whigs  in  the  last  years  of 
that  period.     Swift's  first  writings,  we  may  notice 
were  not  a  help  but  the  main  hindrance  to  his 
preferment.    The    patronage    of   literature    was 
thus  in  great  part  political  in  its  character.     It 
represents  the  first  scheme  by  which  the  new  class 
of  parliamentary  statesmen  recruited  their  party 
from  the  rising  talent,  or  rewarded  men  for  active 
or  effective  service.    The  speedy  decay  of  the 
system  followed  for  obvious  reasons.    As  party 
government  became  organised,  the  patronage  was 
used  in  a  different  spirit.     Offices  had  to  be  given 
to  gratify  members  of  Parliament  and  their  con- 
stituents, not  to  scholars  who  could  write  odes  on 


40     English  Literature  and  Society 

victories  or  epistles  to  secretaries  of  State.  It  was 
the  machinery  for  controlling  votes.  Meanwhile 
we  need  only  notice  that  the  patronage  of  authors 
did  not  mean  the  patronage  of  learned  divines  or 
historians,  but  merely  the  patronage  of  men  who 
could  use  their  pens  in  political  warfare,  or  at 
most  of  men  who  produced  the  kind  of  literary 
work  appreciated  in  good  society. 

The  "town"  was  the  environment  of  the  wits 
who  produced  the  literature  generally  called  after 
Queen  Anne.  We  may  call  it  the  literary  organ 
of  the  society.  It  was  the  society  of  London,  or 
of  the  region  served  by  the  new  penny-post,  which 
included  such  remote  villages  as  Paddington  and 
Brompton.  The  city  was  large  enough,  as  Ad- 
dison observes,  to  include  numerous  "nations," 
each  of  them  meeting  at  the  various  coffee-houses. 
The  clubs  at  which  the  politicians  and  authors 
met  each  other  represented  the  critical  tribimals, 
when  no  such  things  as  literary  journals  existed. 
It  was  at  these  that  judgment  was  passed  upon  the 
last  new  poem  or  pamphlet,  and  the  writer  sought 
for  their  good  opinion  as  he  now  desires  a  favour- 
able review.  The  tribunal  included  the  rewarders 
as  well  as  the  judges  of  merit;  and  there  was 
plenty  of  temptation  to  stimulate  their  generosity 
by  flattery.  Still  the  relation  means  a  great  im- 
provement on  the  preceding  state  of  things.     The 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         41 

aristocrat  was  no  doubt  conscious  of  his  inherent 
dignity,  but  he  was  ready  on  occasion  to  hail 
Swift  as  "Jonathan"  and,  in  case  of  so  highly 
cultivated  a  specimen  as  Addison,  to  accept  an 
author's  marriage  to  a  countess.  The  patrons 
did  not  exact  the  personal  subservience  of  the 
preceding  period ;  and  there  was  a  real  recognition 
by  the  more  powerful  class  of  literary  merit  of 
a  certain  order.  Such  a  method,  however,  had 
obvious  defects.  Men  of  the  world  have  their 
characteristic  weaknesses;  and  one,  to  go  no 
further,  is  significant.  The  Club  in  England 
corresponded  more  or  less  to  the  Salon  which  at 
different  times  had  had  so  great  an  influence  upon 
French  literature.  It  differed  in  the  marked 
absence  of  feminine  elements.  The  clubs  meant 
essentially  a  society  of  bachelors,  and  the  conversa- 
tion, one  infers,  was  not  especially  suited  for  ladies. 
The  Englishman,  gentle  or  simple,  enjoyed  him- 
self over  his  pipe  and  his  bottle  and  dismissed 
his  womenkind  to  their  beds.  The  one  author  of 
the  time  who  speaks  of  the  influence  of  women 
with  really  chivalrous  appreciation  is  the  generous 
Steele,  with  his  famous  phrase  about  Lady 
Elizabeth  Hastings  and  a  liberal  education.  The 
clubs  did  not  foster  the  affectation  of  Moliere's 
Pr^cieuses;  but  the  general  tone  had  a  coarseness 
and  occasional  brutality  which  shows  too  clearly 


42     English  Literature  and  Society 

that  they  did  not  enter  into  the  fiill  meaning  of 
Steele's  most  admirable  saying. 

To  appreciate  the  spirit  of  this  society  we  must 
take  into  account  the  political  situation  and 
the  intellectual  implication.  The  parliamentary 
statesman,  no  longer  dependent  upon  court  favour, 
had  a  more  independent  spirit  and  personal  self- 
respect.  He  was  fully  aware  of  the  fact  that  he 
represented  a  distinct  step  in  political  progress. 
His  class  had  won  a  great  struggle  against  arbi- 
trary power  and  bigotry,  England  had  become 
the  land  of  free  speech,  of  religious  toleration,  im- 
partial justice,  and  constitutional  order.  It  had 
shown  its  power  by  taking  its  place  among  the 
leading  European  states.  The  great  monarchy  be- 
fore which  the  English  court  had  trembled,  and 
from  which  even  patriots  had  taken  bribes  in  the 
Restoration  period,  was  met  face  to  face  in  a  long 
and  doubtful  struggle  and  thoroughly  humbled  in 
a  war,  in  which  an  English  general,  in  command  of 
an  English  contingent,  had  won  victories  unprece- 
dented in  our  history  since  the  Middle  Ages. 
Patriotic  pride  received  a  stimulus  such  as  that 
which  followed  the  defeat  of  the  Armada  and  pro- 
ceded  the  outburst  of  the  Elizabethan  literature. 
Those  successes,  too,  had  been  won  in  the  name 
of  "liberty" — a  vague  if  magical  word  which  I 
shall  not  seek  to  define  at  present.     England,  so 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         43 

sound  Whigs  at  least  sincerely  believed,  had 
become  great  because  it  had  adopted  and  carried 
out  the  true  Whig  principles.  The  most  intelli- 
gent Frenchmen  of  the  coming  generation  admitted 
the  claim;  they  looked  upon  England  as  the  land 
both  of  liberty  and  philosophy,  and  tried  to 
adopt  for  themselves  the  creed  which  had  led  to 
such  triumphant  results.  One  great  name  may 
tell  us  sufficiently  what  the  principles  were  in 
the  eyes  of  the  cultivated  classes,  who  regarded 
themselves  and  their  own  opinions  with  that 
complacency  in  which  we  are  happily  never 
deficient.  Locke  had  laid  down  the  fundamental 
outlines  of  the  creed,  philosophical,  religious,  and 
political,  which  was  to  dominate  English  thought 
for  the  next  century.  Locke  was  one  of  the  most 
honourable,  candid,  and  amiable  of  men,  if  meta- 
physicians have  sometimes  wondered  at  the  success 
of  his  teaching.  He  had  not  the  logical  thorough- 
ness and  consistency  which  marks  a  Descartes  or 
Spinoza,  nor  the  singular  subtlety  which  distin- 
guishes Berkeley  and  Hume;  nor  the  eloquence 
and  imaginative  power  which  gave  to  Bacon  an 
authority  greater  than  was  due  to  his  scientific 
requirements.  He  was  a  thoroughly  modest, 
prosaic,  tentative,  and  sometimes  clumsy  writer, 
who  raises  great  questions  without  solving  them 
or   fully   seeing   the   consequences    of   his    own 


44     English  Literature  and  Society 

position.  Leaving  any  explanation  of  his  power 
to  metaphysicians,  I  need  only  note  the  most 
conspicuous  condition,  Locke  ruled  the  thought 
of  his  own  and  the  coming  period  because  he 
interpreted  so  completely  the  fimdamental  beliefs 
which  had  been  worked  out  at  his  time.  He 
ruled,  that  is,  by  obeying.  Locke  represents  the 
very  essence  of  the  common-sense  of  the  intelligent 
classes.  I  do  not  ask  whether  his  simplicity 
covered  really  profoimd  thought  or  embodied 
superficial  crudities;  but  it  was  most  admirably 
adapted  to  the  society  of  which  I  have  been 
speaking.  The  excellent  Addison,  for  example, 
who  was  no  metaphysician,  can  adopt  Locke  when 
he  wishes  to  give  a  philosophical  air  to  his  amiable 
lectures  upon  arts  and  morals.  Locke's  philoso- 
phy, that  is, blends  spontaneously  with  the  ordinary 
language  of  all  educated  men.  To  the  historian 
of  philosophy  the  period  is  marked  by  the  final 
disappearance  of  scholasticism.  The  scholastic 
philosophy  had  of  course  been  challenged  genera- 
tions before.  Bacon,  Descartes,  and  Hobbes, 
however,  in  the  preceding  century  had  still  treated 
it  as  the  great  incubus  upon  intellectual  progress, 
and  it  was  not  yet  exorcised  from  the  universities. 
It  had,  however,  passed  from  the  sphere  of  living 
thought.  This  implies  a  series  of  correlative 
changes  in  the  social  and  intellectual  which  are 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         45 

equally  conspicuous  in  the  literary  order,  and 
which  I  must  note  without  attempting  to  inquire 
which  are  the  ultimate  or  most  fimdamental 
causes  of  reciprocally  related  developments.  The 
changed  position  of  the  Anglican  church  is  suffi- 
ciently significant.  In  the  time  of  Laud,  the 
bishops  in  alHance  with  the  Crown  endeavoured  to 
enforce  the  jurisdiction  of  the  ecclesiastical  courts 
upon  the  nation  at  large,  and  to  suppress  all 
Non-Conformity  by  law.  Every  subject  of  the 
king  is  also  amenable  to  Church  discipline.  By 
the  Revolution  any  attempt  to  enforce  such 
discipline  had  become  hopeless.  The  existence 
of  Non-Conformist  churches  has  to  be  recog- 
nised as  a  fact,  though  perhaps  an  impleasant 
fact.  The  Dissenters  can  be  worried  by  disquali- 
fications of  various  kinds ;  but  the  claim  to  tolera- 
tion, of  Protestant  sects  at  least,  is  admitted; 
and  the  persecution  is  political  rather  than 
ecclesiastical.  They  are  not  regarded  as  heretics, 
but  as  representing  an  interest  which  is  opposed 
to  the  dominant  class  of  the  landed  gentry.  The 
Church  as  such  has  lost  the  power  of  discipline 
and  is  gradually  falling  under  the  power  of  the 
dominant  aristocratic  class.  When  Convocation 
tries  to  make  itself  troublesome,  in  a  few  years,  it 
will  be  silenced  and  drop  into  impotence.  Church- 
feeling  indeed,  is  still  strong,  but  the  clergy  have 


46     English  Literature  and  Society 

become  thoroughly  subservient,  and  during  the 
century  will  be  mere  appendages  to  the  nobility 
and  squirearchy.  The  intellectual  change  is 
parallel.  The  great  divines  of  the  seventeenth 
century  speak  as  members  of  a  learned  corporation 
condescending  to  instruct  the  laity.  The  hearers 
are  supposed  to  listen  to  the  voice  (as  Donne  puts 
it)  as  from  "angels  in  the  clouds."  They  are 
experts,  steeped  in  a  special  science,  above  the 
comprehension  of  the  vulgar.  They  have  been 
trained  in  the  schools  of  theology  and  have  been 
thoroughly  drilled  in  the  art  of  "syllogising." 
They  are  walking  libraries  with  the  ancient 
fathers  at  their  finger-ends;  they  have  studied 
Aquinas  and  Duns  Scotus,  and  have  shown  their 
technical  knowledge  in  controversies  with  the 
great  Jesuits,  Suarez  and  Bellarmine.  They 
speak  frankly,  if  not  ostentatiously,  as  men  of 
learning,  and  their  sermons  are  overweighted  with 
quotations,  showing  familiarity  with  the  classics, 
and  with  the  whole  range  of  theological  Hterature, 
Obviously  the  hearers  are  to  be  passive  recipients, 
/not  judges,  of  the  doctrine.  But  by  the  end  of 
the  century  Tillotson  has  become  the  typical 
divine,  whose  authority  was  to  be  as  marked  in 
theology  as  that  of  Locke  in  philosophy.  Tillot- 
son has  entirely  abandoned  any  ostentatious  show 
of  learning.     He  addresses  his  hearers  in  language 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         47 

on  a  level  with  their  capabilities,  and  assumes  that 
thej'  are  not  "passive  buckets  to  be  pumped  into," 
but  reasonable  men  who  have  a  right  to  be  critics 
as  well  as  disciples.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that 
the  appeal  must  be  to  reason,  and  to  the  reason 
which  has  not  gone  through  any  special  profes- 
sional training.  The  audience,  that  is,  to  which 
the  divine  must  address  himself  is  one  composed 
of  the  average  laity  who  are  quite  competent  to 
judge  for  themselves.  That  is  the  change  that  is 
meant  when  we  are  told  that  this  was  the  period 
of  the  development  of  English  prose.  Dryden, 
one  of  its  great  masters,  professed  to  have  learned 
his  style  from  Tillotson.  The  writer,  that  is,  has  to 
suit  himself  to  the  new  audience  which  has  grown 
up.  He  has  to  throw  aside  all  the  panoply  of 
scholastic  logic,  the  vast  apparatus  of  professional 
learning,  and  the  complex  Latinised  constructions, 
which,  however  admirable  some  of  the  effects 
produced,  shows  that  the  writer  is  thinking  of 
well-read  scholars,  not  of  the  ordinary  man  of  the 
world.  He  has  learned  from  Bacon  and  Descartes, 
perhaps,  that  his  supposed  science  was  useless 
lumber;  and  he  has  to  speak  to  men  who  not 
only  want  plain  language  but  are  quite  convinced 
that  the  pretensions  of  the  old  authority  have 
been  thoroughly  exploded. 

Politically,  the  change  means  toleration,  for  it 


48     English  Literature  and  Society 

I  is  assumed  that  the  vulgar  can  judge  for  them- 
selves; intellectually,  it  means  rationalism,  that 
is,  an  appeal  to  the  reason  common  to  all  men; 
and,  in  literature  it  means  the  hatred  of  pedantry 
and  the  acceptance  of  such  literary  forms  as  are 
thoroughly  congenial  and  intelligible  to  the 
common-sense  of  the  new  audience.  The  hatred 
of  the  pedantic  is  the  characteristic  sentiment  of 
the  time.  When  Berkeley  looked  forward  to  a 
new  world  in  America,  he  described  it  as  the 
Utopia 

Where  men  shall  not  impose  for  truth  and  sense 
The  pedantry  of  courts  and  schools. 

When  he  annoxmced  a  metaphysical  discovery  he 
showed  his  imderstanding  of  the  principle  by 
making  his  exposition — strange  as  the  proceeding 
appears  to  us — ^as  short  and  as  clear  as  the  most 
admirable  literary  skill  could  contrive.  That 
eccentric  ambition  dominates  the  writings  of  the 
times.  In  a  purely  literary  direction  it  is  illus- 
trated by  the  famous  but  ciiriously  rambling  and 
equivocal  controversy  about  the  Ancients  and 
Modems  begun  in  France  by  Perrault  and 
Boileau.  In  England  the  most  familiar  outcome 
was  Swift's  Battle  of  the  Books,  in  which  he 
struck  out  the  famous  phrase  about  sweetness 
and  light,  "  the  two  noblest  of  things ' ' ;  which  he 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         49 

illustrated  by  ridiculing  Bentley's  criticism  and 
Dryden's  poetry.  I  may  take  for  granted  the 
motives  which  induced  that  generation  to  accept 
as  their  models  the  great  classical  masterpieces, 
the  study  of  which  had  played  so  important  a 
part  in  the  revival  of  letters  and  the  new  philo- 
sophy. I  may  perhaps  note,  in  passing,  that  we 
do  not  always  remember  what  classical  litera- 
ture meant  to  that  generation.  In  the  first  place, 
the  education  of  a  gentleman  meant  nothing  then 
except  a  certain  drill  in  Greek  and  Latin — whereas 
now  it  includes  a  little  dabbling  in  other  branches 
of  knowledge.  In  the  next  place,  if  a  man  had 
an  appetite  for  literature,  what  else  was  he  to 
read?  Imagine  every  novel,  poem,  and  essay 
written  during  the  last  two  centuries  to  be 
obliterated — and  further,  the  literature  of  the 
early  seventeenth  century  and  all  that  went  before 
to  be  regarded  as  pedantic  and  obsolete,  the  field 
of  study  would  be  so  limited  that  a  man  would  be 
forced  in  spite  of  himself  to  read  his  Homer  and 
Virgil.  The  vice  of  pedantry  was  not  very 
accurately  defined — sometimes  it  is  the  Ancient, 
sometimes  the  Modern,  who  appears  to  be  pe- 
dantic. Still,  as  in  the  Battle  of  the  Books  con- 
troversy, the  general  opinion  seems  to  be  that 
the  critic  should  have  before  him  the  great 
classical  models,  and  regard  the  English  literature 


50      English  Literature  and  Society 

of  the  seventeenth  century  as  a  collection  of  all 
possible  errors  of  taste.  When,  at  the  end  of 
this  period,  Swift  with  Pope  formed  the  project 
of  the  Scriblenis  Club,  its  aim  was  to  be  a  joint- 
stock  satire  against  all  "false  tastes"  in  learning, 
art,  and  science.  That  was  the  characteristic 
conception  of  the  most  brilliant  men  of  letters  of 
the  time. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  general  indication  of 
the  composition  of  the  literary  organ.  It  is  made 
up  of  men  of  the  world — "  Wits  "  is  their  favourite 
self-designation,  scholars  and  gentlemen,  with 
rather  more  of  the  gentlemen  than  the  scholars — 
living  in  the  capital,  which  forms  a  kind  of  island 
of  illumination  amid  the  surrounding  darkness  of 
the  agricultural  coimtry — including  men  of  rank 
and  others  of  sufficient  social  standing  to  receive 
them  on  friendly  terms — meeting  at  coffee- 
houses and  in  a  kind  of  tacit  confederation 
of  clubs  to  compare  notes  and  form  the  whole 
public  opinion  of  the  day.  They  are  conscious 
that  in  them  is  concentrated  the  enlightenment  of 
the  period.  The  class  to  which  they  belong  is 
socially  and  politically  dominant — the  advance 
guard  of  national  progress.  It  has  finally  cast  off 
the  incubus  of  a  retrograde  political  system;  it 
has  placed  the  nation  in  a  position  of  unprece- 
dented importance  in  Europe;  and  it  is  setting 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         51 

an  example  of  ordered  liberty  to  the  whole 
civilised  world.  It  has  forced  the  Church  and 
the  priesthood  to  abandon  the  old  claim  to 
spiritual  supremacy.  It  has,  in  the  intellectual 
sphere,  crushed  the  old  authority  which  embodied 
superstition,  antiquated  prejudice,  and  a  sham 
system  of  professional  knowledge,  which  was 
upheld  by  a  close  corporation.  It  believes  in 
reason — meaning  the  principles  which  are  evident 
to  the  ordinary  common-sense  of  men  at  its  own 
level.  It  believes  in  what  it  calls  the  Religion  of 
Nature — the  plain  demonstrable  truths  obvious 
to  every  intelligent  person.  With  Locke  for  its 
spokesman,  and  Newton  as  a  living  proof  of  its 
scientific  capacity,  it  holds  that  England  is  the 
favoured  nation  marked  out  as  the  land  of  liberty, 
philosophy,  common-sense,  toleration,  and  intel- 
lectual excellence.  And  with  certain  reserves,  it 
will  be  taken  at  its  own  valuation  by  foreigners 
who  are  still  in  darkness  and  deplorably  given  to 
slavery,  to  say  nothing  of  wooden  shoes  and  the 
consimiption  of  frogs.  Let  us  now  consider  the  1 
literary  result.  * 

I  may  begin  by  recalling  a  famous  controversy 
which  seems  to  illustrate  very  significantly  some 
of  the  characteristic  tendencies  of  the  day.  The 
stage,  when  really  flourishing,  might  be  expected 
to  show  most  conspicuously  the  relations  betweei; 


52      English  Literature  and  Society 

authors  and  the  society.  The  dramatist  may  be 
writing  for  all  time;  but  if  he  is  to  fill  a  theatre, 
he  must  clearly  adapt  himself  to  the  tastes  of  the 
living  and  the  present.  During  the  first  half  of 
the  period  of  which  I  am  now  speaking,  Dryden 
was  still  the  dictator  of  the  literary  world;  and 
Dryden  had  adopted  Congreve  as  his  heir,  and 
abandoned  to  him  the  province  of  the  drama — 
Congreve,  though  he  ceased  to  write,  was  recog- 
nised during  his  life  as  the  great  man  of  letters  to 
whom  Addison,  Swift,  and  Pope  agreed  in  paying 
respect,  and  indisputably  the  leading  writer  of 
English  comedy.  When  the  comic  drama  was 
imsparingly  denounced  by  Collier,  Congreve  de- 
fended himself  and  his  friends.  In  the  judg- 
ment of  contemporaries  the  pedantic  parson  won 
a  complete  triumph  over  the  most  brilliant  of 
wits.  Although  Congreve 's  early  abandonment 
of  his  career  was  not  caused  by  Collier's  attack 
alone,  it  was  probably  due  in  part  to  the  general 
sentiment  to  which  Collier  gave  utterance.  I  will 
ask  what  is  implied  as  a  matter  of  fact  in  regard 
to  the  social  and  literary  characteristics  of  the 
time.  The  Shakespearian  drama  had  behind 
it  a  general  national  impulse.  With  Fletcher, 
it  began  to  represent  a  court  already  out  of 
harmony  with  the  strongest  currents  of  national 
feeling.     Dryden,  in  a  familiar  passage,  gives  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       53 

reason  of  the  change  from  his  own  point  of  view. 
Two  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  he  says  in 
an  often  quoted  passage,  were  acted  (about  1698) 
for  one  of  Shakespeare  or  Jonson.  His  explana- 
tion is  remarkable.  It  was  because  the  later 
dramatists  ' '  imderstood  the  conversation  of  gentle-  1 
men  much  better, ' '  whose  wild  "  debaucheries  and  | 
quickness  of  wit  no  poet  can  ever  paint  as  they  I 
have  done. "  In  a  later  essay  he  explains  that  the 
greater  refinement  was  due  to  the  influence  of  the 
court.  Charles  II.,  familiar  with  the  most  brilliant 
courts  of  Europe,  had  roused  us  from  barbarism 
and  rebellion,  and  taught  us  to  "  mix  our  solidity  " 
with  "  the  air  and  gaiety  of  our  neighbours"!  I 
need  not  cavil  at  the  phrases  "refinement"  and 
"gentleman."  If  those  words  can  be  fairly  ap- 
plied to  the  courtiers  whose  "wild  debauch- 
eries" disgusted  Evelyn  and  startled  even  the 
respectable  Pepys,  they  may  no  doubt  be 
applied  to  the  stage  and  the  dramatic  per- 
sons. The  rake,  or  "wild  gallant"  had  made 
his  first  appearance  in  Fletcher,  and  had  shown 
himself  more  nakedly  after  the  Restoration. 
This  is  the  so-called  reaction  so  often  set  down 
to  the  accoimt  of  the  unlucky  Puritans.  The 
degradation,  says  Macaulay,  was  the  "effect  of 
the  prevalence  of  Puritanism  under  the  Common- 
wealth."    The  attempt  to  make  a   "nation   of 


54     English  Literature  and  Society 

saints"  inevitably  produced  a  nation  of  scoffers. 
In  what  sense,  in  the  first  place,  was  there  a 
"reaction"  at  all?  The  Puritans  had  suppressed 
the  stage  when  it  was  already  far  gone  in  decay 
because  it  no  longer  satisfied  the  great  bulk  of 
the  nation.  The  reaction  does  not  imply  that 
the  drama  regained  its  old  position.  When  the 
rule  of  the  saints  or  pharisees  was  broken  down, 
the  stage  did  not  become  again  a  national  organ. 
A  very  small  minority  of  the  people  can  ever 
have  seen  a  perfomance.  There  were,  we  miist 
remember,  only  two  theatres  under  Charles  II., 
and  there  was  a  difficulty  in  supporting  even 
two.  Both  depended  almost  exclusively  on  the 
patronage  of  the  court  and  the  courtiers.  From 
the  theatre,  therefore,  we  can  only  argue  directly 
to  the  small  circle  of  the  rowdy  debauchees  who 
gathered  round  the  new  king.  It  certainly  may 
be  true,  but  it  was  not  proved  from  their  be- 
haviour, that  the  national  morality  deteriorated, 
and  in  fact  I  think  nothing  is  more  difficult  than 
to  form  any  trustworthy  estimate  of  the  state  of 
morality  in  a  whole  nation,  confidently  as  such 
estimates  are  often  put  forward.  What  may  be 
fairly  inferred,  is  that  a  certain  class,  who  had  got 
from  imder  the  rule  of  the  Puritan,  was  now  free 
from  legal  restraint  and  took  advantage  of  the 
odium  excited  by  pharisaical  strictness,  to  indulge 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         55 

in  the  greater  licence  which  suited  the  taste  of 
their  patrons.  The  result  is  sufficiently  shown 
when  we  see  so  great  a  man  as  Dryden  pander  to 
the  lowest  tastes,  and  guilty  of  obscenities  of 
which  he  was  himself  ashamed,  which  would  be 
now  inexcusable  in  the  lowest  public  haunts. 
The  comedy,  as  it  appears  to  us,  must  have  been 
written  by  blackguards  for  blackguards.  When 
Congreve  became  Dryden 's  heir  he  inherited  the 
established  tradition.  Under  the  new  order  the 
**town"  had  become  supreme;  and  Congreve 
wrote  to  meet  the  taste  of  the  class  which  was 
gaining  in  self-respect  and  independence.  He 
tells  us  in  the  dedication  of  his  best  play,  The 
Way  of  tJte  World,  that  his  taste  had  been 
refined  in  the  company  of  the  Earl  of  Montagu. 
The  claim  is  no  doubt  justifiable.  So  Hroace 
Walpole  remarks  that  Vanbrugh  wrote  so  well 
because  he  was  familiar  with  the  conversation 
of  the  best  circles.  The  social  influences  were 
favourable  to  the  undeniable  literary  merits,  to 
the  force  and  point  in  which  Congreve 's  dialogue 
is  still  superior  to  that  of  any  English  rival,  the 
vigour  of  Vanbrugh  and  the  vivacity  of  their 
chief  ally,  Farquhar.  Moreover,  although  their 
moral  code  is  anything  but  strict,  these  writers 
did  not  descend  to  some  of  the  depths  often 
soimded  by   Dryden  and  Wycherly.    The  new 


56  English  Literature  and  Society- 
spirit  might  seem  to  be  passing  on  with  more 
literary  vitaHty  into  the  old  forms.  And  yet 
the  consequence,  or  certainly  the  sequel  to 
Collier's  attack,  was  the  decay  of  the  stage  in 
every  sense,  from  which  there  was  no  recovery 
till  the  time  of  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan, 

This  is  the  phenomenon  which  we  have  to 
consider;  let  us  listen  for  a  moment  to  the 
"distinguished  critics"  who  have  denounced  or 
defended  the  comedy  of  the  time.  Macaulay 
gives  as  a  test  of  the  morality  of  the  Restoration 
stage  that  on  it,  for  the  first  time,  marriage 
becomes  the  topic  of  ridicule.  We  are  supposed 
to  sympathise  with  the  adulterer,  not  with  the 
deceived  husband — a  fault,  he  says,  which  stains 
no  play  written  before  the  Civil  War.  Addison 
had  already  suggested  this  test  in  the  Spectator, 
and  proceeds  to  lament  that  "  the  multitudes  are 
shut  out  from  this  noble  'diversion'  by  the 
immorality  of  the  lessons  inculcated. ' '  Lamb,  in- 
dulging in  ingenious  paradox,  admires  Congreve 
for  "excluding  from  his  scenes  (with  one  ex- 
ception) any  pretensions  to  goodness  or  good 
feeling  whatever."  Congreve,  he  says,  spreads 
a  "  privation  of  moral  light"  over  his  characters, 
and  therefore  we  can  admire  them  without  com- 
punction. We  are  in  an  artificial  world  where 
we  can  drop  our  moral  prejudices  for  the  time 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         57 

being.  Hazlitt  more  daringly  takes  a  different 
position  and  asserts  that  one  of  Wycherly's 
coarsest  plays  is  "worth  ten  sermons" — which 
perhaps  does  not  imply  with  him  any  high 
estimate  of  moral  efficacy.  There  is,  however, 
this  much  of  truth,  I  take  it,  in  Hazlitt 's  con- 
tention. Lamb's  theory  of  the  non-morality  of 
the  dramatic  world  will  not  stand  examination. 
The  comedy  was  in  one  sense  thoroughly  "real- 
istic"; and  I  am  inclined  to  say,  that  in  that 
lay  its  chief  merit.  There  is  some  value  in 
any  truthful  representation,  even  of  vice  and 
brutality.  There  would  certainly  be  no  diffi- 
culty in  finding  flesh  and  blood  originals  for 
the  rakes  and  the  fine  ladies  in  the  memoirs 
of  Grammont  or  the  diaries  of  Pepys.  The 
moral  atmosphere  is  precisely  that  of  the  dis- 
solute court  of  Charles  II.,  and  the  "privation 
of  moral  light"  required  is  a  delicate  way  of 
expressing  its  characteristic  feeling.  In  the  worst 
performances  we  have  not  got  to  any  unreal 
region,  but  are  breathing  for  the  time  the  atmo- 
sphere of  the  lowest  resorts,  where  reference  to 
pure  or  generous  sentiment  would  imdoubtedly 
have  been  received  with  a  guffaw,  and  coarse 
cynicism  be  regarded  as  the  only  form  of  comic 
insight.  At  any  rate  the  audiences  for  which 
Congreve  wrote  had  just  so  much  of  the  old 


58     English  Literature  and  Society 

leaven  that  we  can  quite  understand  why  they 
were  regarded  as  wicked  by  a  majority  of  the 
middle  classes.  The  doctrine  that  all  play-going 
was  wicked  was  naturally  confirmed,  and  the 
dramatists  retorted  by  ridiculing  all  that  their 
enemies  thought  respectable.  Congreve  was,  I 
fancy,  a  man  of  better  morality  than  his  charac- 
ters, only  forced  to  pander  to  the  tastes  of  the 
rake  who  had  composed  the  dominant  element 
of  his  audience.  He  writes  not  for  mere  black- 
guards, but  for  the  fine  gentleman,  who  affects 
premature  knowledge  of  the  world,  professes  to 
be  more  cynical  than  he  really  is,  and  shows 
his  acuteness  by  deriding  hypocrisy  and  pharisaic 
htimbug  in  every  claim  to  virtue.  He  dwells 
upon  the  seamy  side  of  life,  and  if  critics,  at- 
tracted by  his  undeniable  brilliance,  have  found 
his  heroines  charming,  to  me  it  seems  that  they 
are  the  kind  of  yoimg  women  whom,  if  I  adopted 
his  moral  code,  I  should  think  most  desirable 
wives — for  my  friends. 

Though  realistic  in  one  sense,  we  may  grant 
to  Lamb  that  such  comedy  becomes  "artificial," 
and  so  far  Lamb  is  right,  because  it  supposes 
I  a  state  of  things  such  as  happily  was  abnormal 
1  except  in  a  small  circle.  The  plots  have  to  be 
made  up  of  impossible  intrigues,  and  imply  a 
distorted  theory  of  life.     Marriage  after  all  is 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         59 

not  really  ridiculous,  and  to  see  it  continuously 
from  this  point  of  view  is  to  have  a  false  picture 
of  realities.  Life  is  not  made  up  of  dodges 
worthy  of  card-sharpers — and  the  whole  mechan- 
ism becomes  silly  and  disgusting.  If  comedy  is 
to  represent  a  full  and  fair  portrait  of  life,  the 
dramatist  ought  surely,  in  spite  of  Lamb,  to 
find  some  space  for  generous  and  refined  feeling. 
There,  indeed,  is  a  difficulty.  The  easiest  way 
to  be  witty  is  to  be  cynical.  It  is  difficult, 
though  desirable,  to  combine  good  feeling  with 
the  comic  spirit.  The  humourist  has  to  expose 
the  contrasts  of  life,  to  unmask  hypocrisy,  and 
to  show  selfishness  lurking  tinder  multitudinous 
disguises.  That,  on  Hazlitt's  showing,  was  the 
preaching  of  Wycherly.  I  can't  think  that  it  was 
the  impression  made  upon  Wycherly 's  readers. 
Such  comedy  may  be  taken  as  satire ;  which  was 
the  excuse  that  Fielding  afterwards  made  for 
his  own  performances.  But  I  cannot  believe 
that  the  actual  audiences  went  to  see  vice  ex- 
posed, or  used  Lamb's  ingenious  device  of  dis- 
believing in  the  reality.  They  simply  liked 
brutal  and  immoral  sentiment,  spiced,  if  possible, 
with  art.  We  may  inquire  whether  there  may 
not  be  a  comedy  which  is  enjoyable  by  the  re- 
fined and  virtuous,  and  in  which  the  intrusion 
of  good  feeling  does  not  jar  upon  us  as  a  discord. 


6o     English  Literature  and  Society 

An  answer  may  be  suggested  by  pointing  to 
Moliere,  and  has  been  admirably  set  forth  in 
Mr.  George  Meredith's  essay  on  the  Comic 
Spirit.  There  are,  after  all,  ridiculous  things 
in  the  world,  even  from  the  refined  and  virtuous 
point  of  view.  The  saint,  it  is  true,  is  apt  to 
lose  his  temper  and  become  too  serious  for  such 
a  treatment  of  life-problems.  Still  the  sane  in- 
tellect which  sees  things  as  they  are  can  find  a 
sphere  within  which  it  is  fair  and  possible  to  apply 
ridicule  to  affectation  and  even  to  vice,  and  with- 
out simply  taking  the  seat  of  the  scomer  or 
substituting  a  coarse  laugh  for  a  delicate  smile. 
A  hearty  laugh,  let  us  hope,  is  possible  even  for 
a  fairly  good  man.  Mr.  Meredith's  essay  indi- 
cates the  conditions  under  which  the  artist  may 
appeal  to  such  a  cultivated  and  refined  himiour. 
The  higher  comedy,  he  says,  can  only  be  the 
fruit  of  a  polished  society  which  can  supply 
both  the  model  and  the  audience.  Where  the 
art  of  social  intercourse  has  been  carried  to  a 
high  pitch,  where  men  have  learned  to  be  at 
once  courteous  and  incisive,  to  admire  urbanity, 
and  therefore  really  good  feeling,  and  to  take  a 
true  estimate  of  the  real  values  of  life,  a  high 
comedy  which  can  produce  irony  without 
coarseness,  expose  shams  without  advocating 
brutaHty,  becomes  for  the  first    time  possible. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         6i 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  condition  is  also 
very  rarely  fulfilled. 

This,  I  take  it,  is  the  real  difficulty.  The 
desirable  thing,  one  may  say,  would  have  been 
to  introduce  a  more  refined  and  human  art  and 
to  get  rid  of  the  coarser  elements.  The  excel- 
lent Steele  tried  the  experiment.  But  he  had 
still  to  work  upon  the  old  lines,  which  would  not 
lend  themselves  to  the  new  purpose.  His  passages 
of  moral  exhortation  would  not  supply  the  salt 
of  the  old  cynical  brutalities;  they  had  a  painful 
tendency  to  become  insipid  and  sentimental,  if  not 
maudlin;  and  only  illustrated  the  difficulty  of 
using  a  literary  tradition  which  developed  spon- 
taneously for  one  purpose  to  adapt  itself  to  a 
wholly  different  aim.  He  produced  at  best  not  a 
new  genus  but  an  awkward  hybrid.  But  behind 
this  was  the  greater  difficulty  that  a  superior 
literature  would  have  required  a  social  elaboration, 
the  growth  of  a  class  which  could  appreciate  and 
present  appropriate  types.  Now  even  the  good 
society  for  which  Congreve  wrote  had  its  merits, 
but  certainly  its  refinement  left  much  to  be  desired. 
One  condition,  as  Mr.  Meredith  again  remarks, 
of  the  finer  comedy  is  such  an  equality  of  the 
sexes  as  may  admit  the  refining  influence  of 
women.  The  women  of  the  Restoration  time 
hardly  exerted  a  refining  influence.    They  adopted 


62     English  Literature  and  Society 

the  ingenious  compromise  of  going  to  the  play, 
but  going  in  masks.  That  is,  they  tacitly  implied 
that  the  brutality  was  necessary,  and  they  sub- 
mitted to  what  they  could  not  openly  approve. 
Throughout  the  eighteenth  century  a  contempt 
for  women  was  still  too  characteristic  of  the  aris- 
tocratic character.  Nor  was  there  any  marked 
improvement  in  the  tastes  of  the  play-going  classes. 
The  plays  denoimced  by  Collier  continued  to 
hold  the  stage,  though  more  or  less  expurgated, 
throughout  the  century.  Comedy  did  not  be- 
come decent.  In  1729,  Arthur  Bedford  carried  on 
Collier's  assault  in  a  "Remonstrance  against  the 
Horrid  Blasphemies  and  Improprieties  which  are 
Still  Used  in  the  English  Play-houses,"  and  col- 
lected seven  thousand  immoral  sentiments  from 
the  plays  (chiefly)  of  the  last  four  years.  I  have 
not  verified  his  statements.  The  inference,  how- 
ever, seems  to  be  clear.  Collier's  attack  could  not 
reform  the  stage.  The  evolution  took  the  form 
of  degeneration.  He  could,  indeed,  give  utter- 
ance to  the  disapproval  of  the  stage  in  general, 
which  we  call  Puritanical,  though  it  was  by  no 
means  confined  to  Puritans  or  even  to  Protestants. 
Bossuet  could  denounce  the  stage  as  well  as  Collier. 
Collier  was  himself  a  Tory  and  a  High  Churchman, 
as  was  William  Law,  of  the  Serious  Call,  who 
also  denoimced  the  stage.     The  sentiment  was, 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         63 

in  fact,  that  of  the  respectable  middle  classes  in 
general.  The  effect  was  to  strengthen  the  pre- 
judice which  held  that  play -going  was  immoral  in 
itself,  and  that  an  actor  deserved  to  be  treated 
as  a  "vagrant" — the  class  to  which  he  legally- 
belonged.  During  the  next  half -century,  at  least, 
that  was  the  prevailing  opinion  among  the  solid 
middle-class  section  of  society. 

The  denimciations  of  Collier  and  his  allies  cer- 
tainly effected  a  reform,  but  at  a  heavy  price. 
They  did  not  elevate  the  stage  or  create  a  better 
type,  but  encouraged  old  prejudices  against  the 
theatre  generally;  the  theatre  was  left  more  and 
more  to  a  section  of  the  "  town,"  and  to  the  section 
which  was  not  too  particular  about  decency. 
"When  Congreve  retired,  and  Vanbrugh  took  to 
architecture,  and  Farquhar  died,  no  adequate 
successors  appeared.  The  production  of  comedies 
was  left  to  inferior  writers,  to  Mrs.  Centlivre,  and 
CoUey  Gibber,  and  Fielding  in  his  unripe  days, 
and  they  were  forced  by  the  disfavour  into  which 
their  art  had  fallen  to  become  less  forcible  rather 
than  to  become  more  refined.  When  a  preacher 
denounces  the  wicked,  his  sermons  seem  to  be 
thrown  away  because  the  wicked  don't  come  to 
church.  Collier  could  not  convert  his  antagonists ; 
he  could  only  make  them  more  timid  and  careful 
to  avoid  giving  palpable  offence.     But  he  could 


64     English  Literature  and  Society 

express  the  growing  sentiment  which  made  the 
drama  an  object  of  general  suspicion  and  dislike, 
and  induced  the  ablest  writers  to  turn  to  other 
methods  for  winning  the  favour  of  a  larger  public. 
The  natural  result,  in  fact,  was  the  develop- 
ment of  a  new  kind  of  literature,  which  was  the 
most  characteristic  innovation  of  the  period.  The 
literary  class  of  which  I  have  hitherto  spoken 
reflected  the  opinions  of  the  upper  social  stratum. 
Beneath  it  was  the  class  generally  known  as  Grub 
Street.  Grub  Street  had  arisen  at  the  time  of 
the  great  civil  struggle.  War  naturally  generates 
journalism;  it  had  struggled  on  through  the 
Restoration  and  taken  a  fresh  start  at  the  Revolu- 
tion and  the  final  disappearance  of  the  licensing 
system.  The  daily  newspaper — meaning  a  small 
sheet  written  by  a  single  author  (editors  as  yet 
were  not) — appeared  at  the  opening  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  Now  for  Grub  Street  the  Wit 
of  the  higher  class  had  nothing  but  dislike.  The 
"hackney  author,"  as  Dunton  called  him,  in  his 
curious  Life  and  Errors,  was  a  mere  huckster,  who 
could  scarcely  be  said  as  yet  to  belong  to  a  pro- 
fession. A  Tutchin  or  De  Foe  might  be  pilloried, 
or  flogged,  or  lose  his  ears,  without  causing  a  touch 
of  compassion  from  men  like  Swift,  who  would 
have  disdained  to  call  themselves  brother  authors. 
Yet  politicians  were  finding  him  useful.     He  was 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         65 

the  victim  of  one  party,  and  might  be  bribed  or 
employed  as  a  spy  by  the  other.  The  history 
of  De  Foe  and  his  painful  struggles  between  his 
conscience  and  his  need  of  living,  sufficiently 
indicates  the  result;  Charles  Leslie,  the  gallant 
non-juror,  for  example,  or  Abel  Boyer,  the  indus- 
trious annalist,  or  the  laborious  but  cantankerous 
Oldmixon,  were  keeping  their  heads  above  water 
by  journalism,  almost  exclusively,  of  course,  politi- 
cal. De  Foe  showed  a  genius  for  the  art,  and  his 
mastery  of  vigorous  vernacular  was  hardly  rivalled 
until  the  time  of  Paine  and  Cobbett  At  any 
rate,  it  was  plain  that  a  market  was  now  arising 
for  periodical  literature  which  might  give  a  scanty 
support  to  a  class  below  the  seat  of  patrons.  It 
was  at  this  point  that  the  versatile,  speculative, 
and  impecimious  Steele  hit  upon  his  famous  dis- 
covery. The  aim  of  the  Tailer,  started  in  April, 
1709,  was  marked  out  with  great  accuracy  from 
the  first.  Its  purpose  is  to  contain  discourses 
upon  all  manner  of  topics — quicquid  agunt  homines, 
as  his  first  motto  put  it — which  had  been  inade- 
quately treated  in  the  daily  papers.  It  is  supposed 
to  be  written  in  the  various  coffee-houses,  and  it 
is  suited  to  all  classes,  even  including  v/omen, 
whose  taste,  he  observes,  is  to  be  caught  by  the 
title.  The  Tailer,  as  we  know,  led  to  the 
Spectator,  and  Addison's    co-operation,   cordially 


66     English  Literature  and  Society 

acknowledged  by  his  friend,  was  a  main  cause  of 
its  unprecedented  success.  The  Spectator  became 
the  model  for  at  least  three  generations  of  writers . 
The  number  of  imitations  is  coimtless:  Fielding, 
Johnson,  Goldsmith,  and  many  men  of  less  fame 
tried  to  repeat  the  success;  persons  of  quality, 
such  as  Chesterfield  and  Horace  Walpole,  con- 
descended to  write  papers  for  the  World — the 
"  Bow  of  Ulysses,"  as  it  was  called,  in  which  they 
could  test  their  strength.  Even  in  the  nineteenth 
century  Hazlitt  and  Leigh  Hxmt  carried  on  the 
form;  as  indeed,  in  a  modified  shape,  many  later 
essayists  have  aimed  at  a  substantially  similar 
achievement.  To  have  contributed  three  or  four 
articles  was,  as  in  the  case  of  the  excellent  Henry 
Grove  (a  name,  of  course,  familiar  to  all  of  you), 
to  have  graduated  with  honours  in  literature. 
Johnson  exhorted  the  literary  aspirant  to  give  his 
days  and  nights  to  the  study  of  Addison;  and 
the  Spectator  was  the  most  indispensable  set  of 
volumes  upon  the  shelves  of  every  library  where 
the  young  ladies  described  by  Miss  Bumey  and 
Miss  Austen  were  permitted  to  indulge  a  growing 
taste  for  literature.  I  fear  that  young  people  of 
the  present  day  discover,  if  they  try  the  experi- 
ment, that  their  curiosity  is  easily  satisfied.  This 
singular  success,  however,  shows  that  the  new 
form   satisfied    a    real   need.    Addison's   genius 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         67 

must,  of  course,  count  for  much  in  the  immediate 
result;  but  it  was  plainly  a  case  where  genius 
takes  up  the  function  for  which  it  is  best  suited, 
and  in  which  it  is  most  fully  recognised.  When 
we  read  him  now  we  are  struck  by  one  fact.  He 
claims  in  the  name  of  the  Spectator  to  be  a  censor 
of  manners  and  morals;  and  though  he  veils  his 
pretensions  imder  delicate  irony,  the  claim  is 
perfectly  serious  at  bottom.  He  is  really  seeking 
to  improve  and  educate  his  readers.  He  aims  his 
gentle  ridicule  at  social  affectations  and  frivoli- 
ties; and  sometimes,  though  avoiding  ponderous 
satire,  at  the  grosser  forms  of  vice.  He  is  not 
afraid  of  laying  down  an  aesthetic  theory.  In  a 
once  famous  series  of  papers  on  the  Imagination, 
he  speaks  with  all  the  authority  of  a  recognised 
critic  in  discussing  the  merits  of  Chevy  Chase 
or  of  Paradise  Lost;  and  in  a  series  of  Saturday 
papers  he  preaches  lay  sermons — which  were 
probably  preferred  by  many  readers  to  the  official 
discourses  of  the  following  day.  They  contain 
those  striking  poems  (too  few)  which  led  Thackeray 
to  say  that  he  could  hardly  fancy  a  "human  in- 
tellect thrilling  with  a  purer  love  and  admiration 
than  Joseph  Addison's."  Now,  spite  of  the  real 
charm  which  every  lover  of  delicate  humour  and 
exquisite  urbanity  must  find  in  Addison,  I  fancy 
that  the  Spectator  has  come  to  mean  for  us  chieHy 


68     English  Literature  and  Society 

Sir  Roger  de  Coverley.  It  is  curious,  and  perhaps 
painful,  to  note  how  very  small  a  proportion  of 
the  whole  is  devoted  to  that  most  admirable 
achievement;  and  to  reflect  how  little  life  there 
is  in  much  that  in  kindness  of  feeling  and  grace 
of  style  is  equally  charming.  One  cause  is  obvious. 
When  Addison  talks  of  psychology  or  aesthetics 
or  ethics  (not  to  speak  of  his  criticism  of  epic 
poetry  or  the  drama) ,  he  must  of  course  be  obsolete 
in  substance ;  but,  moreover,  he  is  obviously  super- 
ficial. A  man  who  would  speak  upon  such  topics 
now  must  be  a  grave  philosopher,  who  has  digested 
libraries  of  philosophy.  Addison,  of  course,  is 
the  most  modest  of  men ;  he  has  not  the  slightest 
suspicion  that  he  is  going  beyond  his  tether ;  and 
that  is  just  what  makes  his  imconscious  audacity 
remarkable.  He  fully  shares  the  characteristic 
belief  of  the  day,  that  the  abstract  problems  are 
soluble  by  common-sense,  when  polished  by 
academic  culture  and  aided  by  a  fine  taste.  It  is 
a  case  of  sancta  simplicitas;'oi  the  charming,  be- 
cause perfectly  unconscious,  self-sufficiency  with 
which  the  Wit,  rejecting  pedantry  as  the  source 
of  all  evil,  thinks  himself  obviously  entitled  to 
lay  down  the  law  as  theologian,  politician,  and 
philosopher.  His  audience  are  evidently  ready 
to  accept  him  as  an  authority,  and  are  flattered 
by  being  treated  as  capable  of  reason,  not  offended 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         69 

by  any  assumption  of  their  intellectual  inferiority. 

With  whatever  shortcomings,  Addison,  and 
in  their  degree  Steele  and  his  other  followers, 
represent  the  stage  at  which  the  literary  organ 
begins  to  be  influenced  by  the  demands  of  a  new 
class  of  readers.  Addison  feels  the  dignity  of  his 
vocation  and  has  a  certain  air  of  gentle  condescen- 
sion, especially  when  addressing  ladies  who  cannot 
even  translate  his  mottoes.  He  is  a  genuine 
prophet  of  what  we  now  describe  as  Culture,  and 
his  exquisite  urbanity  and  delicacy  qualify  him 
to  be  a  worthy  expositor  of  the  doctrines,  though 
his  outlook  is  necessarily  limited.  He  is  there- 
fore implicitly  trying  to  solve  the  problem  which 
could  not  be  adequately  dealt  with  on  the  stage ; 
to  set  forth  a  view  of  the  world  and  human  nature 
which  shall  be  thoroughly  refined  and  noble,  and 
yet  imply  a  full  appreciation  of  the  humorous 
aspects  of  life.  The  inimitable  Sir  Roger  embodies 
the  true  comic  spirit;  though  Addison's  own  at- 
tempt at  comedy  was  not  successful. 

One  obvious  characteristic  of  this  generation 
is  the  didacticism  which  is  apt  to  worry  us. 
Poets,  as  well  as  philosophers  and  preachers, 
are  terribly  argumentative.  Fielding's  remark 
(through  Parson  Adams),  that  some  things  in 
Steele's  comedies  are  almost  as  good  as  a  sermon, 
applies   to   a   much   wider   range   of   literature. 


70     English  Literature  and  Society 

One  is  tempted  by  way  of  explanation  to  ascribe 
this  to  a  primitive  and  ultimate  instinct  of 
the  race.  Englishmen — including  of  course  Scots- 
men— have  a  passion  for  sermons,  even  when 
they  are  half  ashamed  of  it;  and  the  British 
Essay,  which  flourished  so  long,  was  in  fact  a  lay 
sermon.  We  must  briefly  notice  that  the 
particular  form  of  this  didactic  tendency  is  a 
natural  expression  of  the  contemporary  rational- 
ism. The  metaphysician  of  the  time  identifies 
emotions  and  passions  with  intellectual  affirma- 
tions, and  all  action  is  a  product  of  logic.  In 
any  case  we  have  to  do  with  a  period  in  which 
the  old  concrete  imagery  has  lost  its  hold  upon 
the  more  intelligent  classes,  and  instead  of  an 
imaginative  symbolism  we  have  a  system  of 
abstract  reasoning.  Diagrams  take  the  place  of 
concrete  pictures;  and  instead  of  a  Milton  jtisti- 
fying  the  ways  of  Providence  by  the  revealed 
history,  we  have  a  Blackmore  arguing  with 
Lucretius,  and  are  soon  to  have  a  Pope  expound- 
ing a  metaphysical  system  in  the  Essay  on  Man. 
Sir  Roger  represents  a  happy  exception  to  this 
method  and  points  to  the  new  development. 
Addison  is  anticipating  the  method  of  later 
novelists,  who  incarnate  their  ideals  in  flesh  and 
blood.  This  and  the  minor  character  sketches, 
which  are  introduced  incidentally,  imply  a  feeling 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  *ji 

after  a  less  didactic  method.  As  yet  the  sermon 
is  in  the  foreground,  and  the  characters  are 
dismissed  as  soon  as  they  have  illustrated  the 
preacher's  doctrine.  Such  a  method  was  conge- 
nial to  the  Wit.  He  was,  or  aspired  to  be,  a 
keen  man  of  the  world;  deeply  interested  in  the 
characteristics  of  the  new  social  order;  in  the 
eccentricities  displayed  at  clubs,  or  on  the  Stock 
Exchange,  or  in  the  political  struggles;  he  is 
putting  in  shape  the  practical  philosophy  implied 
in  the  conversations  at  clubs  and  coffee-houses ;  he 
deUghts  in  discussing  such  psychological  problems 
as  were  suggested  by  the  worldly  wisdom  of 
Rochefoucauld,  and  he  appreciates  clever  char- 
acter sketches  such  as  those  of  La  Bruy^re, 
Both  writers  were  favourites  in  England.  But 
he  has  become  heartily  tired  of  the  old  romance, 
and  has  not  yet  discovered  how  to  combine  the 
interest  of  direct  observation  of  man  with  a 
thoroughly  concrete  form  of  presentation. 

The  periodical  essay  represents  the  most  ' 
successful  innovation  of  the  day;  and,  as  I  have 
suggested,  because  it  represents  the  mode  by 
which  the  most  cultivated  writer  could  be  brought 
into  effective  relation  with  the  genuine  interests 
of  the  largest  audience.  Other  writers  used  it 
less  skilfully,  or  had  other  ways  of  delivering 
their  message  to  mankind.     Swift,  for  example. 


72     English  Literature  and  Society 

had  already  shown  his  peculiar  vein.  He  gives 
a  different,  though  equally  characteristic,  side  of 
the  intellectual  attitude  of  the  Wit.  In  the 
Battle  of  the  Books  he  had  assumed  the 
pedantry  of  the  scholar;  in  the  Tale  of  a  Tub 
with  amazing  audacity  he  fell  foul  of  the 
pedantry  of  divines.  His  blows,  as  it  seemed  to 
the  archbishops,  struck  theology  in  general;  he 
put  that  right  by  pouring  out  scorn  upon  Deists 
and  all  who  were  silly  enough  to  believe  that 
the  vulgar  could  reason;  and  then  in  his  first 
political  writings  began  to  expose  the  corrupt  and 
selfish  nature  of  politicians — though  at  present 
only  of  Whig  politicians.  Swift  is  one  of  the 
most  impressive  of  all  literary  figures,  and  I  will 
not  even  touch  upon  his  personal  peculiarities. 
I  will  only  remark  that  in  one  respect  he  agrees 
with  his  friend  Addison.  He  emphasises,  of 
icourse,  the  aspect  over  which  Addison  passes 
lightly ;  he  scorns  fools  too  heartily  to  treat  them 
tenderly  and  do  justice  to  the  pathetic  side  of 
even  human  folly.  But  he  too  believes  in 
culture — though  he  may  despair  of  its  dissemina- 
tion. He  did  his  best,  during  his  brief  period 
of  power,  to  direct  patronage  towards  men  of 
letters,  even  to  Whigs;  and  tried,  happily 
without  success,  to  found  an  English  Academy. 
His  zeal  was  genuine,  though  it  expressed  itself 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  73 

by  scorn  for  dtmces  and  hostility  to  Grub  Street. 
He  illustrates  one  little  peculiarity  of  the  Wit. 
In  the  society  of  the  clubs  there  was  a  natural 
tendency  to  form  minor  cliques  of  the  truly 
initiated,  who  looked  with  sovereign  contempt 
upon  the  hackney  author.  One  little  indication 
is  the  love  of  mystifications,  or  what  were  entitled 
"  bites. ' '  All  the  Wits,  as  we  know,  combined  to 
tease  the  unlucky  fortune-teller.  Partridge,  and 
to  maintain  that  their  prediction  of  his  death  had 
been  verified,  though  he  absurdly  pretended  to 
be  still  ahve.  So  Swift  tells  us  in  the  journal  to 
Stella  how  he  had  circulated  a  lie  about  a  man 
who  had  been  hanged  coming  to  life  again,  and 
how  footmen  are  sent  out  to  inquire  into  its 
success.  He  made  a  hit  by  writing  a  sham 
account  of  Prior's  mission  to  Paris  supposed 
to  come  from  a  French  valet.  The  inner  circle 
chuckled  over  such  performances,  which  would 
be  impossible  when  their  monopoly  of  information 
had  been  broken  up.  A  similar  satisfaction  was 
given  by  the  various  burlesques  and  more  or  less 
ingenious  fables  which  were  to  be  fully  appreciated 
by  the  inner  circle ;  such  as  the  tasteless  narrative 
of  Dennis's  frenzy  by  which  Pope  professed  to 
be  punishing  his  victim  for  an  attack  upon 
Addison ;  or  by  such  squibs  as  Arbuthnot's  John 
Bidl —  a  parable  which  gives  the  Tory  view  in  a 


74     English  Literature  and  Society 

form  fitted  for  the  intelligent.  The  Wits,  that  is, 
form  an  inner  circle,  who  like  to  speak  with  an 
affectation  of  obscurity  even  if  the  meaning  be 
tolerably  transparent,  and  show  that  they  are 
behind  the  scenes  by  occasionally  circulating  bits 
of  sham  news.  They  like  to  form  a  kind  of 
select  upper  stratum,  which  most  fully  believes 
in  its  own  intellectual  eminence,  and  shows  a  con- 
tempt for  its  inferiors  by  burlesque  and  rough 
sarcasm. 

It  is  not  difficult  (especially  when  we  know  the 
result)  to  guess  at  the  canons  of  taste  which 
will  pass  muster  in  such  regions.  Enthusiastical 
politicians  of  recent  days  have  been  much  given 
to  denoimcing  modem  clubs,  where  everybody  is 
a  cynic  and  unable  to  appreciate  the  great  ideas 
which  stir  the  masses.  It  may  be  so;  my  own 
acquaintance  with  club  life,  though  not  very 
extensive,  does  not  convince  me  that  every 
member  of  a  London  club  is  a  Mephistopheles ; 
but  I  will  admit  that  a  certain  excess  of  hard 
worldly  wisdom  may  be  generated  in  such  resorts ; 
and  we  find  many  conspicuous  traces  of  that 
tendency  in  the  clubs  of  Queen  Anne's  reign. 
Few  of  them  have  Addison's  gentleness  or  his 
perception  of  the  finer  side  of  human  nature. 
It  was  by  a  rare  combination  of  qualities  that  he 
was  enabled  to  write  like  an  accomplished  man 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  75 

of  the  world,  and  yet  to  introduce  the  emo- 
tional element  without  any  jarring  discord.  The 
literary  reformers  of  a  later  day  denounce  the 
men  of  this  period  as  "artificial"!  a  phrase 
the  antithesis  of  which  is  "natural."  Without 
asking  at  present  what  is  meant  by  the  implied 
distinction — an  inquiry  which  is  beset  by  whole 
systems  of  equivocations — I  may  just  observe 
that  in  this  generation  the  appeal  to  Nature  was 
as  common  and  emphatic  as  in  any  later  time. 
The  leaders  of  thought  believe  in  reason,  and 
reason  sets  forth  the  Religion  of  Nature  and 
assimies  that  the  Law  of  Nature  is  the  basis 
of  political  theory.  The  corresponding  literary 
theory  is  that  Art  must  be  subordinate  to  Nature. 
The  critics'  rules,  as  Pope  says  in  the  poem  which 
most  fully  expresses  the  general  doctrine, 

Are  Nature  still,  but  Nature  methodised  ; 

Nature,  like  Liberty,  is  but  restrained 

By  the  same  laws  which  first  herself  ordained. 

The  Nature  thus  "  methodised ' '  was  the  nature  of 
the  Wit  himself ;  the  set  of  instincts  and  prejudices 
which  to  him  seemed  to  be  so  normal  that  they 
must  be  natural.  Their  standards  of  taste,  if  arti- 
ficial to  us,  were  spontaneous,  not  fictitious;  the 
Wits  were  not  wearing  a  mask,  but  were  exhibit- 
ing their  genuine  selves  with  perfect  simplicity. 


76     English  Literature  and  Society 

Now  one  characteristic  of  the  Wit  is  always  a 
fear  of  ridicule.  Above  all  things  he  dreads 
making  a  fool  of  himself.  The  old  lyric,  for 
example,  which  came  so  spontaneously  to  the 
Elizabethan  poet  or  dramatist,  and  of  which 
echoes  are  still  to  be  foimd  in  the  Restoration, 
has  decayed,  or  rather,  has  been  transformed. 
When  you  have  written  a  genuine  bit  of  love- 
poetry,  the  last  place,  I  take  it,  in  which  you 
think  of  seeking  the  applause  of  a  congenial 
audience,  would  be  the  smoking-room  of  your 
club;  but  that  is  the  nearest  approach  to  the 
critical  tribunal  of  Queen  Anne's  day.  It  is  nec- 
essary to  smuggle  in  poetry  and  passion  in  dis- 
guise, and  conciUate  possible  laughter  by  stating 
plainly  that  you  anticipate  the  ridicule  yourself. 
In  other  words,  you  write  society  verses  like 
Prior,  temper  sentiment  by  wit,  and  if  you  do 
not  express  vehement  passion,  turn  out  elegant 
verses,  salted  by  an  irony  which  is  a  tacit 
apology  perhaps  for  some  genuine  feeling.  The 
old  pastoral  has  become  hopelessly  absurd  because 
Thyrsis  and  Lycidas  has  become  extravagant 
and  "imnatural."  The  form  might  be  adopted 
for  practice  in  versification;  but  when  Ambrose 
Phillips  took  it  a  little  too  seriously,  Pope,  whose 
own  performances  were  not  much  better,  came 
down  on  him  for  his  want  of  sincerity,  and  Gay 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         n 

showed  what  could  be  still  made  of  the  form  by 

introducing  real  rustics   and  turning  it  into  a 

burlesque.     Then,  as  Johnson  puts  it,  the  "  effect 

of  reality  and  truth  became  conspicuous,  even 

when  the  intention  was  to  show  them  grovelling 

and  degraded."     The  Rape   of  the  Lock  is  the 

masterpiece,  as  often  noticed,  of  an  unconscious 

allegory.     The  sylph,  who  was  introduced  with 

such  curious  felicity,  is  to  be  pimished  if  he  fails 

to  do  his  duty,  by  imprisonment  in  a  lady's  toilet 

apparatus. 

Gums  and  pomatums  shall  his  flight  restrain. 
While  clogged  he  beats  his  silver  wings  in  vain. 

Delicate  fancy  and  real  poetical  fancy  may  be 
turned  to  account;  but  under  the  mask  of  the 
mock-heroic.  We  can  be  poetical  still,  it  seems 
to  say,  only  we  must  never  forget  that  to  be 
poetical  in  deadly  earnest  is  to  run  the  risk  of 
being  abstu-d.  Even  a  Wit  is  pacified  when  he  is 
thus  dexterously  coaxed  into  poetry  disguised  as 
mere  playful  exaggeration,  and  feels  quite  safe  in 
following  the  fortune  of  a  game  of  cards  in  place 
of  a  sanguinary  Homeric  battle.  Ariel  is  still 
alive,  but  he  adopts  the  costume  of  the  period 
to  apologise  for  his  eccentricities.  Poetry  thus 
imderstood  may  either  give  a  charm  to  the  trivial 
or  fall  into  mere  burlesque;  and  though  Pope's 
achievement  is  an  undeniable  triumph,  there  are 


78     English  Literature  and  Society 

blots  in  an  otherwise  wonderful  performance 
which  show  an  uncomfortable  concession  to  the 
coarser  tastes  of  his  audience. 

I  will  not  dwell  further  upon  a  tolerably 
obvious  theme.  I  must  pass  to  the  more  serious 
literature.  The  Wit  had  not  the  smallest  notion 
that  his  attitude  disqualified  him  for  succession  in 
the  loftiest  poetical  endeavour.  He  thinks  that 
his  critical  keenness  will  enable  him  to  surpass 
the  old  models.  He  wishes,  in  the  familiar 
phrase,  to  be  " correct" ;  to  avoid  the  gross  faults 
of  taste  which  disfigured  the  old  Gothic  barbarism 
of  his  forefathers.  That  for  him  is  the  very- 
meaning  of  reason  and  nature.  He  will  write 
tragedies  which  must  get  rid  of  the  brutalities, 
the  extravagance,  the  audacious  mixture  of  farce 
and  tragedy  which  was  still  attractive  to  the 
vulgar.  He  has,  indeed,  a  kind  of  lurking 
regard  for  the  vigour  of  the  Shakespearian 
epoch;  his  patriotic  prejudices  pluck  at  him 
at  intervals,  and  suggest  that  Marlborough's 
countrymen  ought  not  quite  to  accept  the  yoke 
of  the  French  Academy.  When  Ambrose  Philips 
produced  The  Distressed  Mother — adapted  from 
Racine — all  Addison's  little  society  was  enthusi- 
astic. Steele  stated  in  the  Prologue  that  the  play 
w^as  meant  to  combine  French  correctness  with 
British   force,   and   praised   it   in   the  Spectator 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  79 

because  it  was  "everywhere  Nature. '  *  The  town, 
he  pointed  out,  would  be  able  to  admire  the 
passions  "  within  the  rules  of  decency,  honour, 
and  good  breeding."  The  performance  was  soon 
followed  by  Cato,  unquestionably,  as  Johnson 
still  declares,  "the  noblest  production  of  Addi- 
son's genius.  * '  It  presents  at  any  rate  the  closest 
conformity  to  the  French  model;  and  falls  into 
comic  results,  as  old  Dennis  pointed  out,  from  the 
so-called  Unity  of  Place,  and  consequent  neces- 
sity of  transacting  all  manner  of  affairs,  love- 
making  to  Cato's  daughter,  and  conspiring  against 
Cato  himself,  in  Cato's  own  hall.  Such  tragedy, 
however,  refused  to  take  root.  Cato,  as  I  think 
no  one  can  deny,  is  a  good  specimen  of  Addison's 
style,  but,  except  a  few  proverbial  phrases,  it  is 
dead.  The  obvious  cause,  no  doubt,  is  that  the 
British  public  liked  to  see  battle,  murder,  and 
sudden  death,  and,  in  spite  of  Addison's  argu- 
ments, enjoyed  a  mixture  of  tragic  and  comic. 
Shakespeare,  though  not  yet  an  idol,  had  still  a 
hold  upon  the  stage,  and  was  beginning  to  be 
imitated  by  Rowe  and  to  attract  the  attention  of 
commentators.  The  sturdy  Briton  would  not  be 
seduced  to  the  foreign  model.  The  attempt  to 
refine  tragedy  was  as  hopeless  as  the  attempt  to 
moralise  comedy.  This  points  to  the  process  by 
which  the  Wit  becomes  "artificial."     He  has  a 


So     English  Literature  and  Society 

profound  conviction,  surely  not  altogether  wrong, 
that  a  tragedy  ought  to  be  a  work  of  art.  The  art- 
ist must  observe  certain  rules ;  though  I  need  not 
ask  whether  he  was  right  in  thinking  that  these 
rules  were  represented  by  the  accepted  interpret- 
ers of  the  teaching  of  Nature.  What  he  did  not 
perceive  was  that  another  essential  condition 
was  absent ;  namely,  that  the  tragic  mood  should 
correspond  to  his  own  "nature."  The  tragic  art 
can,  like  other  arts,  only  flourish  when  it  em- 
bodies spontaneously  the  emotions  and  convic- 
tions of  the  spectators;  when  the  dramatist  is 
satisfying  a  genuine  demand,  and  is  himself  ready 
to  see  in  human  life  the  conflict  of  great  passions 
and  the  scene  of  impressive  catastrophes.  Then 
the  theatre  becomes  natiirally  the  mirror  upon 
which  the  imagery  can  be  projected.  But  the 
society  to  which  Addison  and  his  fellows  be- 
longed was  a  society  of  good,  commonplace,  sens- 
ible people,  who  were  fighting  each  other  by 
pamphlets  instead  of  by  swords;  who  played  a 
game  in  which  they  staked  not  life  and  death  but 
a  comfortable  competency ;  who  did  not  even  cut 
off  the  head  of  a  fallen  minister,  who  no  longer 
believed  in  great  statesmen  of  heroic  proportions 
rising  above  the  vulgar  herd;  and  who  had  a 
very  hearty  contempt  for  romantic  extravagance. 
A  society  in  which  common-sense  is  regarded 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         8i 

as  the  cardinal  intellectual  virtue  does  not 
naturally  suggest  the  great  tragic  themes.  Cato 
is  obviously  contrived  not  inspired;  and  the 
dramatist  is  thinking  of  obeying  the  rules  of 
good  taste,  instead  of  having  them  already  in- 
corporated in  his  thought.  This  comes  out  in 
one  chief  monument  in  the  literary  movement, 
I  mean  Pope's  Homer.  Pope,  as  we  know,  made 
himself  independent  by  that  performance.  The 
method  of  pubHcation  is  significant.  He  had 
no  interest  in  the  general  sale,  which  was  large 
enough  to  make  his  publisher's  fortune.  The 
publisher  meanwhile  suppUed  him  gratuitously 
with  the  copies  for  which  the  subscribers  paid  him 
six  guineas  apiece.  That  means  that  he  received 
a  kind  of  commission  from  the  upper  class  to 
execute  the  translation.  The  list  of  his  sub- 
scribers seems  to  be  almost  a  directory  to  the 
upper  circle  of  the  day;  every  person  of  quality 
had  felt  himself  boimd  to  promote  so  laudable  an 
imdertaking;  the  patron  had  been  superseded  by 
a  kind  of  joint-stock  body  of  collective  patronage. 
The  Duke  of  Buckingham,  one  of  its  accepted 
mouthpieces,  had  said  in  verse  in  his  Essay  on 
Poetry  that,  if  you  once  read  Homer,  everything 
else  will  be  "mean  and  poor." 

Verse  will  seem  prose ;  yet  often  in  him  look 
And  you  will  hardly  need  another  book. 


82      English  Literature  and  Society 

That  was  the  correct  profession  of  faith.  Yet 
as  a  good  many  Wits  found  Greek  an  obstacle,  a 
translation  was  needed.  Chapman  had  become 
barbarous;  Hobbes  and  Ogilvie  were  hope- 
lessly flat;  and  Pope  was  therefore  handsomely 
paid  to  produce  a  book  which  was  to  be  the 
standard  of  the  poetical  taste.  Pope  was  thus  the 
chosen  representative  of  the  literary  spirit.  It  is 
needless  to  point  out  that  Pope's  Iliad  is  not 
Homer's.  That  was  admitted  from  the  first. 
When  we  read  in  a  speech  of  Agamemnon 
exhorting  the  Greeks  to  abandon  the  siege, 

Love,  duty,  safety  summon  us  away; 
'T  is  Nature's  voice,  and  Nature  we  obey, 

we  hardly  require  to  be  told  that  we  are  not 
listening  to  Homer's  Agamemnon,  but  to  an 
Agamemnon  in  a  full-bottomed  wig.  Yet  Pope's 
Homer  had  a  success  tmparalleled  by  any  other 
translation  of  profane  poetry;  for  the  rest  of  the 
century  it  was  taken  to  be  a  masterpiece;  it  has 
been  the  book  from  which  Byron  and  many  clever 
lads  first  learned  to  enjoy  what  they  at  least  took 
for  Homer;  and,  as  Mrs.  Gallup  has  discovered, 
it  was  used  by  Bacon  at  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth  centiuy,  and  by  somebody  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth.  That  it  has  very  high 
literary  merits   can,  I  think,  be  denied  by  no 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         83 

unprejudiced  reader,  but  I  have  only  to  do  with 
one  point.     Pope  had  the  advantage — I  take  it  to 
be  an  advantage — of  having  a  certain  style  pre- 
scribed for  him  by  the  literary  tradition  inherited 
from  Dryden.     A  certain  diction  and  measure  had 
to  be  adopted,  and  the  language  to  be  run  into  an 
accepted  mould.     The  mould  was  no  doubt  con- 
ventional, and  corresponded  to  a  temporary  phase 
of  sentiment.     Like  the  costume  of  the  period,  it 
strikes  us  now  as  "artificial"  because  it  was  at 
the  time  so  natural.     It  was  worked  out  by  the 
courtly  and  aristocratic  class,  and  was  fitted  to 
give  a  certain  dignity  and  lucidity,  and  to  guard 
against  mere  greatness  and  triviality  of  utterance. 
At  any  rate  it  saved  Pope  from  one  enormous 
difficulty.     The  modem  translator  is  aware  that 
Homer  lived  a  long  time  ago  in  a  very  different 
state  of  intellectual  and  social  development,  and 
yet  feels  bound    to    reproduce    the  impressions 
made  upon  the  ancient  Greek.     The  translator 
has  to  be  an  accurate  scholar  and  to  give  the  right 
shade  of  meaning  for  every  phrase,  while  he  has 
also  to  approximate  to  the  metrical  effect.     The 
conclusion  seems  to  be  that  the  only  language 
into  which  Homer  could  be  adequately  translated 
would  be  Greek,  and  that  you  must  then  use  the 
words  of  the  original.     The  actual  result  is  that 
the  translator  is  cramped  by  his  fetters;  that  his 


84      English  Literature  and  Society 

use  of  archaic  words  savours  of  affectation,  and 
that,  at  best,  he  has  to  emphasise  the  fact  that  his 
sentiments  are  fictitious.  Pope  had  no  trouble  of 
that  kind.  He  aims  at  giving  something  equiva- 
lent to  Homer,  not  Homer  himself,  and  therefore 
at  something  really  practical.  He  has  the  same 
advantage  as  a  man  who  accepts  a  living  style 
of  architecture  or  painting;  he  can  exert  all  his 
powers  of  forcible  expression  in  a  form  which 
will  be  thoroughly  imderstood  by  his  audience, 
and  which  saves  him,  though  at  a  certain  cost, 
from  the  difficulties  of  trying  to  reproduce  the 
characteristics  which  are  really  incongruoiis. 

There  are  disadvantages.  In  his  time  the  learned 
M.  Bossu  was  the  accepted  authority  upon  the 
canons  of  criticism.  Buckingham  says  he  had 
explained  the  "mighty  magic"  of  Homer.  One 
doctrine  of  his  was  that  an  epic  poet  first  thinks 
of  a  moral  and  then  invents  a  fable  to  illustrate  it. 
The  theory  struck  Addison  as  a  little  overstated, 
but  it  is  an  exaggeration  of  the  prevalent  view. 
According  to  Pope,  Homer's  great  merit  was  his 
"invention" — and  by  this  he  sometimes  appears 
to  imply  that  Homer  had  even  invented  the  epic 
poem.  Poetry  was,  it  seems,  at  a  "low  pitch"  in 
Greece  in  Homer's  time,  as  indeed  were  other 
arts  and  sciences.  Homer,  wishing  to  instruct  his 
countrymen  in  all  kinds  of  topics,  devised  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         85 

epic  poem;  made  use  of  the  popular  mythology 
to  supply  what  in  the  technical  language  was 
called  his  "  machinery  " ;  converted  the  legends  into 
philosophical  allegory,  and  introduced  "strokes 
of  knowledge  from  his  whole  circle  of  arts  and 
sciences."  This  "circle"  includes  for  example 
geography,  rhetoric,  and  history;  and  the  whole 
poem  is  intended  to  inculcate  the  political  moral 
that  many  evils  sprang  from  the  want  of  union 
among  the  Greeks.  Not  a  doubt  of  it!  Homer 
was  in  the  sphere  of  poetry  what  Lycurgus  was 
supposed  to  be  in  the  field  of  legislation.  He  had 
at  a  single  bound  created  poetry  and  made  it  a 
vehicle  of  philosophy,  politics,  and  ethics.  Upon 
this  showing  the  epic  poem  is  a  form  of  art  which 
does  not  grow  out  of  the  historical  conditions  of 
the  period;  but  it  is  a  permanent  form  of  art,  as 
good  for  the  eighteenth  century  as  for  the  heroic 
age  of  Greece;  it  may  be  adopted  as  a  model, 
only  requiring  certain  additional  ornaments  and 
refinements  to  adapt  it  to  the  taste  of  a  more 
enlightened  period.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  Pope 
could  clearly  perceive  some  of  the  absurd  conse- 
quences of  M.  Bossu's  view.  He  ridiculed  that 
authority  very  keenly  in  the  "  Recipe  to  Make  an 
Epic  Poem"  which  first  appeared  in  the  Guardian, 
while  he  was  at  work  upon  his  own  translation, 
Bossu's  rules,  he  says,  will  enable  us  to  make  epic 


86     English  Literature  and  Society 

poems  without  geniiis  or  reading :  and  he  proceeds 
to  show  how  you  are  to  work  your  "machines," 
and  introduce  your  allegories  and  descriptions, 
and  extract  your  moral  oii.t  of  the  fable  at 
leisure,  "only  making  it  siu-e  that  you  strain  it 
sufficiently." 

That  was  the  point.  The  enlightened  critic  sees 
that  the  work  of  art  embodies  certain  abstract 
rules;  which  may,  and  probably  will — if  he  be  a 
man  of  powerful  intellectual  power, — ^be  rational, 
and  suggest  instructive  canons.  But,  as  Pope  sees, 
it  does  not  follow  that  the  inverse  process  is  feasi- 
ble ;  that  is,  that  you  construct  your  poem  simply 
by  applying  the  rules.  To  be  a  good  cricketer  you 
must  apply  certain  rules  of  dynamics ;  but  it  does 
not  follow  that  a  sound  knowledge  of  dynamics 
will  enable  you  to  play  good  cricket.  Pope  sees 
that  something  more  than  an  acceptance  of  M. 
Bossu's  or  Aristotle's  canons  is  requisite  for  the 
writer  of  a  good  epic  poem.  The  something 
more,  according  to  him,  appears  to  be  learning 
and  genius.  It  is  certainly  true  that  at  least 
genius  must  be  one  requisite.  But  then,  there  is 
the  further  point.  Will  the  epic  poem,  which  was 
the  product  of  certain  remote  social  and  intellectual 
conditions,  serve  to  express  the  thoughts  and 
emotions  of  a  totally  different  age?  Considering 
the  difference  between  Achilles  and  Marlborough 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  87 

or  the  bards  of  the  heroic  age  and  the  Wits  who 
frequented  clubs  and  coffee-houses  under  Queen 
Anne,  it  was  at  least  important  to  ask  whether 
Homer  and  Pope — ^taking  them  to  be  alike  in 
genius — would  not  find  it  necessary  to  adopt 
radically  different  forms.  That  is  for  us  so  obvious 
a  suggestion  that  one  wonders  at  the  tacit  assump- 
tion of  its  irrelevance.  Pope,  indeed,  by  taking 
the  Iliad  for  a  framework,  a  ready-made  fabric 
which  he  could  embroider  with  his  own  tastes, 
managed  to  construct  a  singularly  spirited  work, 
full  of  good  rhetoric  and  not  infrequently  rising 
to  real  poetical  excellence  ."^  But  it  did  not  follow 
that  an  original  production  on  the  same  lines 
would  have  been  possible.  Some  years  later. 
Young  complained  of  Pope  for  being  imitative, 
and  said  that  if  he  had  dared  to  be  original,  he 
might  have  produced  a  modem  epic  as  good  as 
the  Iliad  instead  of  a  mere  translation.  That  is 
not  quite  credible.  Pope  himself  tried  an  epic 
poem  too,  which  happily  came  to  nothing;  but  a 
similar  ambition  led  to  such  works  as  Glover's 
Leonidas  and  The  Epigoniad  of  the  Scottish  Homer 
Wilkie.  English  poets  as  a  rule  seem  to  have 
suffered  at  some  period  of  their  lives  from  this 
malady  and  contemplated  Arthuriads;  but  the 
constructional  epic  died,  I  take  it,  with  Southey's 
respectable  poems. 


88     English  Literature  and  Society 

We  may  consider,  then,  that  any  literary  form, 
the  drama,  the  epic  poem,  the  essay,  and  so  forth, 
is  comparable  to  a  species  in  natural  history.  It 
has,  one  may  say,  a  certain  organic  principle 
which  determines  the  possible  modes  of  develop- 
ment. But  the  line  along  which  it  wiU  actually 
develop  depends  upon  the  character  and  constitu- 
tion of  the  literary  class  which  turns  it  to  accoimt, 
for  the  utterance  of  its  own  ideas;  and  depends 
also  upon  the  correspondence  of  those  ideas  with 
the  most  vital  and  powerful  intellectual  currents 
of  the  time.  The  literary  class  of  Queen  Anne's 
day  was  admirably  qualified  for  certain  formations ; 
the  Wits  leading  the  "town,"  and  forming  a  small 
circle  accepting  certain  canons  of  taste,  could  ex- 
press with  admirable  clearness  and  honesty  the 
judgment  of  bright  common-sense ;  the  ideas  which 
commend  themselves  to  the  man  of  the  world, 
and  to  a  rationalism  which  was  the  embodiment 
of  common-sense.  They  produced  a  literature, 
which  in  virtue  of  its  sincerity  and  harmonious 
development  within  certain  limits  coiild  pass 
for  some  time  as  a  golden  age.  The  aversion 
to  pedantry  limited  its  capacity  for  the  highest 
poetical  creation,  and  made  the  imagination  sub- 
servient to  the  prosaic  imderstanding.  The  com- 
edy had  come  to  adapt  itself  to  the  tastes  of  the 
class  which,  instead  of  representing  the  national 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  89 

movement,  was  composed  of  the  more  disreputable 
part  of  the  town.  The  society  unable  to  develop 
it  in  the  direction  of  refinement  left  it  to  second- 
rate  writers.  It  became  enervated  instead  of 
elevated.  The  epic  and  the  tragic  poetry,  ceasing 
to  reflect  the  really  powerful  impulses  of  the  day, 
were  left  to  the  connoisseur  and  dilettante  man  of 
taste,  and  though  they  could  write  with  force  and 
dignity  when  renovating  or  imitating  older  master- 
pieces, such  literature  became  effete  and  hopelessly 
artificial.  It  was  at  best  a  display  of  technical 
skill,  and  could  not  correspond  to  the  strongest 
passions  and  conditions  of  the  time.  The  invention 
of  the  periodical  essay,  meanwhile,  indicated  what 
was  a  condition  of  permanent  vitality.  There,  at 
least,  the  Wit  was  appealing  to  a  wide  and  grow- 
ing circle  of  readers,  and  could  utter  the  real 
living  thoughts  and  impulses  of  the  time.  The 
problem  for  the  coming  period  was  therefore 
marked  out.  The  man  of  letters  had  to  develop 
a  living  literature  by  becoming  a  representative  of 
the  ideas  which  really  interested  the  whole  culti- 
vated classes,  instead  of  writing  merely  for  the 
exquisite  critic,  or  still  less  for  the  regenerating 
and  obnoxious  section  of  society.  That  indeed,  I 
take  it,  is  the  general  problem  of  literature ;  but  I 
shall  have  to  trace  the  way  in  which  its  solution 
was  attempted  in  the  next  period. 


Ill 

(I7I4-I739) 

*  I  ""HE  death  of  Queen  Anne  opens  a  new  period 
*  in  the  history  of  literature  and  of  politics. 
Under  the  first  Georges  we  are  in  the  very  heart  of 
the  eighteenth  century ;  the  century,  as  its  enemies 
used  to  say,  of  coarse  utilitarian  aims,  of  religious 
indifference,  and  political  corruption;  or,  as  I  pre- 
fer to  say,  the  century  of  sound  common-sense 
and  growing  toleration,  and  of  steady  social  and 
industrial  development. 

To  us,  to  me  at  least,  it  presents  something 
pleasant  in  retrospect.  There  were  then  no 
troublesome  people  with  philanthropic  or  politi- 
cal or  religious  nostrums,  proposing  to  turn  the 
world  upside  down  and  introduce  an  impromptu 
millennium.  The  history  of  periods  when  people 
were  cutting  each  other's  throats  for  creeds  is  no 
doubt  more  exciting;  but  we,  who  profess  tolera- 
tion, ought  surely  to  remember  that  you  cannot 
have  martyrs  without  bigots  and  persecutors ;  and 
that  fanaticism,  though  it  may  have  its  heroic 

aspects,  has  also  a  very  ugly  side  to  it.     At  any 

90 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         91 

rate,  we  who  come  after  a  century  of  revolutionary 
changes,  and  are  often  told  that  the  whole  order 
of  things  may  be  upset  by  some  social  earthquake, 
look  back  with  regret  to  the  days  of  quiet  solid 
progress,  when  everything  seemed  to  have  settled 
down  to  a  quiet,  stable  equilibrium.  Wealth  and 
comfort  were  growing — surely  no  bad  things; 
and  John  Bull — he  had  just  received  that  name 
from  Arbuthnot — was  waxing  fat  and  compla- 
cently contemplating  his  own  admirable  qualities. 
It  is  the  period  of  the  composition  of  "  Rule  Brit- 
annia" and  "The  Roast  Beef  of  Old  England," 
and  of  the  settled  belief  that  your  lusty,  cudgel- 
playing,  beer-drinking  Briton  was  worth  three  of 
the  slaves  who  ate  frogs  and  wore  wooden  shoes 
across  the  Channel.  The  British  constitution  was 
the  embodiment  of  perfect  wisdom,  and,  as  such, 
was  entitled  to  be  the  dread  and  envy  of  the 
world.  To  the  political  historian  it  is  the  era 
of  Walpole;  the  huge  mass  of  solid  common- 
sense,  who  combined  the  qualities  of  the  sturdy 
country  squire  and  the  thorough  man  of  business ; 
whose  great  aim  was  to  preserve  the  peace;  to 
keep  the  country  as  much  as  might  be  out  of  the 
continental  troubles  which  it  did  not  imderstand, 
and  in  which  it  had  no  concern ;  and  to  carry  on 
business  upon  sound  commercial  principles.  It 
is  of  course  imdeniable  that  his  rule  not  only 


92     English  Literature  and  Society 

meant  regard  for  the  solid  material  interests  of 
the  coimtry,  but  too  often  appealed  to  the  interests 
of  the  ruling  class.  Philosophical  historians  who 
deal  with  the  might-have-been  may  argue  that  a 
man  of  higher  character  might  have  worked  by 
better  means  and  have  done  something  to  purify 
the  political  atmosphere.  Walpole  was  not  in 
advance  of  his  day ;  but  it  is  at  least  too  clear  to 
need  any  exposition  that  imder  the  circumstances 
corruption  was  inevitable.  When  the  House  of 
Commons  was  the  centre  of  political  authority, 
when  so  many  boroughs  were  virtually  private 
property,  when  men  were  not  stirred  to  the 
deeper  issues  by  any  great  constitutional  struggle 
— ^party  government  had  to  be  carried  on  by 
methods  which  involved  various  degrees  of  job- 
bery and  bribery.  The  disease  was  certainly  not 
peculiar  to  Walpole 's  age;  though  perhaps  the 
symptoms  were  more  obvious  and. avowed  more 
blimtly  than  usual.  As  Walpole 's  masterful  ways 
drove  his  old  allies  into  opposition,  they  denoimced 
the  system  and  himself;  but  imfortunately  al- 
though they  claimed  to  be  patriots  and  patterns  of 
political  virtue,  they  were  made  pretty  much  of 
the  same  materials  as  the  arch-corrupter.  When 
the  "  moneyed  men, "  upon  whom  he  had  relied, 
came  to  be  in  favour  of  a  warlike  policy  and  were 
roused    by    the    story  of  Captain  Jenkins's  ear, 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         93 

Walpole  fell,  but  no  reign  of  purity  followed.  The 
growing  dissatisfaction,  however,  with  the  Wal- 
polean  system  implied  some  very  serious  condi- 
tions, and  the  cry  against  corruption,  in  which 
nearly  all  the  leading  writers  of  the  time  joined, 
had  a  very  serious  significance  in  literature  and 
in  the  growth  of  public  opinion. 

First,  however,  let  me  glance  at  the  change  as 
it  immediately  affected  the  literary  organ.  The 
old  club  and  coffee-house  society  broke  up  with 
remarkable  rapidity.  While  Oxford  was  sent  to 
the  Tower,  and  Bolingbroke  escaped  to  France, 
Swift  retired  to  Dublin,  and  Prior,  after  being 
imprisoned,  passed  the  remainder  of  his  life  in 
retirement.  Pope  settled  down  to  translating 
Homer,  and  took  up  his  abode  at  Twickenham, 
outside  the  exciting  and  noisy  London  world  in 
which  the  poor  invalid  had  been  jostled.  Addison 
soared  into  the  loftier  regions  of  politics  and 
married  his  Countess,  and  ceased  to  preside  at 
Buttons*.  Steele  held  on  for  a  time,  but  in  declin- 
ing prosperity  and  diminished  literary  activity, 
till  his  retirement  to  Wales.  No  one  appeared 
to  fill  the  gaps  thus  made  in  the  ranks  either  of 
the  Whigs'  or  the  Tories'  section  of  literature. 
The  change  was  obviously  connected  with  the  sys- 
tematic development  of  the  party  system.  Swift 
bitterly  denounced  Walpole  for  his  indifference 


94     English  Literature  and  Society 

to  literature!  "Bob  the  poet's  foe"  was  guided 
by  other  motives  in  disposing  of  his  patronage. 
Places  in  the  Customs  were  no  longer  to  be  given 
to  writers  of  plays  or  complimentary  epistles  in 
verse,  or  even  to  promising  young  politicians,  but 
to  members  of  Parliament  or  the  constituents  in 
whom  they  were  interested.  The  placemen,  who 
were  denounced  as  one  of  the  great  abuses  of  the 
time,  were  rewarded  for  voting  power  not  for 
literary  merit.  The  patron,  therefore,  was  dis- 
appearing; though  one  or  two  authors,  such  as 
Congreve  and  Gay,  might  be  still  petted  by  the 
nobility;  and  Young  somehow  got  a  pension  out 
of  Walpole,  probably  through  Bubb  Dodington, 
the  very  questionable  parson  who  still  wished  to 
be  a  Maecenas.  Meanwhile  there  was  a  compen- 
sation. The  bookseller  was  beginning  to  super- 
sede the  patron.  Tonson  and  Lin  tot  were  making 
fortunes;  the  first  Longman  was  founding  the 
famous  firm  which  still  flourishes;  and  the  career 
of  the  disreputable  and  piratical  Curll  shows  that 
at  least  the  demand  for  miscellaneous  literature 
was  growing.  The  anecdotes  of  the  misery  of 
authors,  of  the  translators  who  lay  three  in  a  bed 
in  Curll's  garret,  of  Samuel  Boyse,  who  had  re- 
duced his  clothes  to  a  single  blanket,  and  Savage 
sleeping  on  a  bulk,  are  sometimes  adduced  to 
show  that  literature  was  then  specially  depressed. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  95 

But  there  never  was  a  time  when  authors  of  dis- 
solute habits  were  not  on  the  brink  of  starvation, 
and  the  authorities  of  the  Literary  Fund  could 
give  us  contemporary  illustrations  of  the  fact. 
The  real  inference  is,  I  take  it,  that  the  demand 
which  was  springing  up  attracted  a  great  many 
impecunious  persons,  who  became  the  drudges  of 
the  rising  class  of  booksellers.  No  doubt  the 
journalist  was  often  in  a  degrading  position. 
The  press  was  active  in  all  political  struggles. 
The  great  men,  Walpole,  Bolingbroke,  and  Pul- 
teney,  wrote  pamphlets  or  contributed  papers  to 
the  Craftsman,  while  they  employed  inferior  scribes 
to  do  the  drudgery.  Walpole  paid  large  sums 
to  the  "Gazetters, "  whom  Pope  denounces;  and 
men  like  Amherst  of  the  Craftsman  or  Gordon  of 
the  Independent  Whig  carried  on  the  ordinary 
warfare.  The  author  by  profession  was  beginning 
to  be  recognised.  Thomson  and  Mallet  came  up 
from  Scotland  during  this  period  to  throw  them- 
selves upon  literature;  Ralph,  friend  of  Franklin 
and  collaborator  of  Fielding,  came  from  New  Eng- 
land ;  and  Johnson  was  attracted  from  the  coun- 
try to  become  a  contributor  to  the  Gentlemxin's 
Magazine,  started  by  Cave  in  1731 — an  event 
which  marked  a  new  development  of  periodical 
literature.  Though  no  one  would  then  advise 
a  young  man  who  could  do  anything  else  to  trust 


96     English  Literature  and  Society 

to  authorship  (it  would  be  rash  to  give  such  advice 
now),  the  new  career  was  being  opened.  There 
were  hack  authors  of  all  varieties.  The  successful 
playwright  gained  a  real  prize  in  the  lottery ;  and 
translations,  satires,  and  essays  on  the  Spectator 
model  enabled  the  poor  drudge  to  make  both 
ends  meet,  though  too  often  in  bondage  to  his 
employer  to  be,  as  I  take  it,  better  off  than  in 
the  previous  period,  when  the  choice  lay  between 
risking  the  pillory  and  selling  yourself  as  a  spy. 

Before  considering  the  effect  produced  under 
the  changed  conditions,  I  must  note  briefly  the 
intellectual  position.  The  period  was  that  of 
the  culmination  of  the  deist  controversy.  In  the 
previous  period  the  rationaUsm  of  which  Locke 
was  the  mouthpiece  represented  the  dominant 
tendency.  It  was  generally  held  on  all  sides 
that  there  was  a  religion  of  nature,  capable  of 
purely  rational  demonstration.  The  problem  re- 
mained as  to  its  relation  to  the  revealed  religion 
and  the  established  creed.  Locke  himself  was  a 
sincere  Christian,  though  he  reduced  the  dogmatic 
element  to  a  minimum.  Some  of  his  disciples, 
however,  became  freethinkers  in  the  technical 
sense,  and  held  that  revelation  was  needless,  and 
that  in  point  of  fact  no  supernatural  revelation 
had  been  made.  The  orthodox,  on  the  other 
hand,   while   admitting  or  declaring  that   faith 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         97 

should  be  founded  on  reason,  and  that  reason 
could  establish  a  "religion  of  nature, "  admitted  in 
various  ways  that  a  supernatural  revelation  was 
an  essential  corollary  or  a  useful  addition  to  the 
simple  rational  doctrine.  The  controversies  which 
arose  upon  this  issue,  after  being  carried  on  very 
vigorously  for  a  time,  caused  less  interest  as  time 
went  on,  and  were  beginning  to  die  out  at  the 
end  of  this  period.  It  is  often  said  in  explanation 
that  deism  or  the  religion  of  nature,  as  then  tmder- 
stood  was  too  vague  and  colourless  a  system  to 
have  any  strong  vitality.  It  faded  into  a  few  ab- 
stract logical  propositions  which  had  no  relation 
to  fact,  and  led  to  the  optimistic  formula, "What- 
ever is,  is  right,"  which  could  in  the  long-run 
satisfy  no  one  with  any  strong  perception  of  the 
darker  elements  of  the  world  and  human  nature. 
This  view  may  be  emphasised  by  the  most  re- 
markable writings  of  the  period.  Butler's  Analogy 
(1736)  has  been  regarded  by  many  even  of  his 
strongest  opponents  as  triumphant  against  the 
deistical  optimism,  and  certainly  emphasises  the 
side  of  things  to  which  that  optimism  is  blind. 

Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  at  the  end  of   | 

f 
the  period   (1739),  uttered  the  sceptical  revolu- 
tion which  destroys  the  base  of  the  deistical  sys- 
tem.   Another  writer  is  notable:  William  Law's   \ 
Serious  Call  is  one  of  the  books  which  has  made 


98     English  Literature  and  Society 

a  turning-point  in  many  men's  lives.     It  specially 
affected  Samuel  Johnson  and  John  Wesley,  and 
many  of  those  who  sympathised  more  or  less  with 
Wesley's   movement.     Law   was   driven   by   his 
sense  of  the  aspects  of  the  rationalist  theories  to 
adopt  a  different  position.     He  became  a  follower 
of  Behmen,  and  his  mysticism  ended  by  repelling 
the  thoroughly  practical  Wesley,  as  indeed  mysti- 
cism in  general  seems  to  be  uncongenial  to  the 
English  mind.     Law's  position  shows  a  difficulty 
which  was  felt  by  others.     It  means  that  while  he 
holds  that  religion  must  be  in  the  highest  sense 
"reasonable"  it  cannot  be  (as  another  author  put 
it)   "founded  upon  argument."     Faith  must  be 
identified  with  the  inner  light,  the  direct  voice  of 
God  to  man,  which  appeals  to  the  soul,  and  is  not 
built  upon  syllogisms  or  allowed  to  depend  upon 
the  result  of  historical  criticism.     This  view,  I 
need  hardly  say,  is  opposed  to  the  whole  rational- 
ist theory,  whether  of  the  deist  or  of  the  orthodox 
variety:  it  was  so   opposed    that  it  could  find 
^arcely  any  sympathy  at  the  time;  and  for  that 
reason    it    indicates    one    characteristic  of  the 
contemporary    thought.     To  omit  the  mystical 
element    is  to  be    cold   and    unsatisfactory   in 
•religious  philosophy,  and  to  be  radically  prosaic 
and    unpoetical    in    the     sphere    of    literature. 
Englishmen  could  never  become  mystics  in  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         99 

technical  sense,  but  they  were  beginning  to  be 
discontented  with  the  bare  logical  system  of  the 
religion  of  nature.  They  were  ready  for  some 
utterance  of  the  emotional  and  imaginative 
element  in  religion  and  philosophy  which  was 
left  out  of  account  by  the  wits  and  rationalists. 
I  do  not  myself  believe  that  the  intellectual 
weakness  of  abstract  deism  gives  a  sufficient 
explanation  of  its  decay.  In  fact,  as  accepted  by 
Rousseau  and  by  some  of  his  English  followers, 
it  could  ally  itself  with  the  ardent  revolutionary 
enthusiasm  which  was  to  be  the  marked  peculi- 
arity of  the  latter  part  of  the  century.  We  must 
add  another  consideration.  Locke  and  his  con- 
temporaries had  laid  down  political  and  religious 
principles  which,  if  logically  developed,  would  lead 
to  the  revolutionary  doctrines  of  1789.  They 
did  not  develop  them,  and  mainly,  I  take  it,  be- 
cause the  practical  application  excited  no  strong 
feeling.  The  spark  did  not  find  fuel  ready  to 
be  lighted.  The  political  and  social  conditions 
supply  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  indifference. 
People  were  practically  content  with  the  existing 
order  in  Church  and  State.  The  deist  contro- 
versies did  not  reach  the  enormous  majority  of 
the  nation,  who  went  quietly  about  their  business 
in  the  old  paths.  The  orthodox  themselves 
were  so  rationalistic  in  principle  that  the  whole 


loo   English  Literature  and  Society 

discussion  seemed  to  turn  upon  non-essential  points. 
But  moreover  the  Church  was  so  thoroughly 
subordinated  to  the  laity;  it  was  so  much  a  part 
of  the  regular  comfortable  system  of  things;  so 
little  able  or  inclined  to  set  up  as  an  independent 
power  claiming  special  authority  and  enforcing  dis- 
cipline, that  it  excited  no  hostility.  Parson  and 
squire  were  part  of  the  regular  system  which 
could  not  be  attacked  without  upsetting  the 
whole  system;  and  there  was  as  yet  no  general 
discontent  with  that  system,  or,  indeed,  any  dis- 
position whatever  to  reconstruct  the  machinery 
which  was  working  so  quietly  and  so  thoroughly 
in  accordance  with  the  dtmib  instincts  of  the 
overwhelming   majority. 

Now  let  us  pass  to  the  literary  manifestation  of 
this  order.  The  literary  society,  as  it  existed 
imder  Queen  Anne,  had  been  broken  up;  two  or 
three  of  the  men  who  had  already  made  their 
mark  continued  their  activity,  especially  Pope  and 
Swift.  Swift,  however,  was  living  apart  from 
the  world,  though  he  was  still  to  come  to  the 
front  on  more  than  one  remarkable  occasion. 
Pope,  meanwhile,  became  the  acknowledged 
dictator.  The  Hterary  movement  may  be  called 
after  Pope,  as  distinctly  as  the  poHtical  after 
Walpole.  He  established  his  dynasty  so  thor- 
oughly that  in  later  days  the  attempt  to  upset 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        loi 

him  was  regarded  as  a  daring  revolution.  What 
was  Pope?  Poet  or  not,  for  his  title  to  the 
name  has  been  disputed,  he  had  one  power  or 
weakness  in  which  he  has  scarcely  been  rivalled. 
No  writer,  that  is,  reflects  so  clearly  and  com- 
pletely the  spirit  of  his  own  day.  His  want  of 
originality  means  the  extreme  and  even  morbid 
sensibility  which  enabled  him  to  give  the  fullest 
utterance  to  the  ideas  of  his  class,  and  of  the 
nation,  so  far  as  the  nation  was  really  represented 
by  the  class.  But  the  literary  class  was  going 
through  a  process  of  differentiation,  as  the  alliance  / 
of  authors  and  statesmen  broke  up.  Pope  repre- 
sents mainly  the  aristocratic  movement.  He  had 
become  independent — a  fact  of  which  he  was  a 
little  too  proud — and  moved  on  the  most  familiar 
terms  with  the  great  men  of  the  age.  The  Tory 
leaders  were,  of  course,  his  special  friends;  but 
in  later  days,  he  became  a  friend  of  Frederick, 
Prince  of  Wales,  and  of  the  politicians  who  broke 
off  from  Walpole;  while  even  with  Walpole  he 
was  on  terms  of  civility.  His  poems  give  a  long 
catalogue  of  the  great  men  of  whose  intimacy  he 
was  so  proud.  Besides  Bolingbroke,  his  "guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend, "  he  counts  nearly  all  the 
great  men  of  his  time.  Somers  and  Halifax,  and 
Granville  and  Congreve,  Oxford  and  Atterbury, 
who  had  encouraged  his  first  efforts;  Pulteney, 


\ 


102    English  Literature  and  Society 

Chesterfield,  Argyll,  Wyndham,  Cobham,  Bathiirst, 
Peterborough,  Queensberry,  who  had  become 
friends  of  later  years,  receive  the  delicate 
compliments  which  imply  his  excusable  pride  in 
their  alliance.  Pope,  therefore,  may  be  con- 
sidered from  one  point  of  view  as  the  authorised 
interpreter  of  the  upper  circle,  which  then  took 
itself  to  embody  the  highest  cultivation  of  the 
nation.  We  may  appreciate  Pope's  poetry  by 
comparing  it  with  an  independent  manifestation 
of  their  morality.  The  most  explicit  summary 
of  the  general  tone  of  the  class-morality  may,  I 
think,  be  gathered  from  Chesterfield's  Letters. 
Though  written  at  a  later  period,  they  sum  up 
the  lesson  he  has  imbibed  from  his  experience  at 
this  time.  Chesterfield  was  no  mere  fribble  or 
rake.  He  was  a  singularly  shrewd,  impartial 
observer  of  life,  who  had  studied  men  at  first 
hand  as  well  as  from  books.  His  letters  deal 
with  the  problem:  What  are  the  conditions  of 
success  in  public  life?  He  treats  it  in  the 
method  of  Machiavelli;  that  is  to  say,  he  in- 
quires what  actually  succeeds,  not  what  ought  to 
succeed.  An  answer  to  that  question  given  by 
a  man  of  great  ability  is  always  worth  studying. 
Even  if  it  should  appear  that  success  in  this  world 
is  not  always  won  by  virtue,  the  fact  should 
be  recognised,  though  we  should  get  rid  of  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        103 

conclusion  that  virtue,  when  an  encumbrance 
to  success,  should  be  discarded.  Chesterfield's 
answer,  however,  is  not  simply  cynical.  His 
pupil  is  to  study  men  and  politics  thoroughly; 
to  know  the  constitutions  of  all  European  states, 
to  read  the  history  of  modem  times  so  far  as  it 
has  a  bearing  upon  business;  to  be  thoroughly 
well  informed  as  to  the  aims  of  kings  and  courts ; 
to  understand  financial  and  diplomatic  move- 
ments; briefly,  as  far  as  was  then  possible,  to 
be  an  incarnate  blue-book.  He  was  to  study  lit- 
erature and  appreciate  art,  though  he  was  care- 
fully to  avoid  the  excess  which  makes  the  pedant 
or  the  virtuoso.  He  was  to  cultivate  a  good 
style  in  writing  and  speaking,  and  even  to  learn 
German.  Chesterfield's  prophecy  of  a  revolution 
in  France  (though,  I  fancy,  a  little  overpraised) 
shows  at  least  that  he  was  a  serious  observer  of 
political  phenomena.  But  besides  these  solid 
attainments,  the  pupil,  we  know,  is  to  study  the 
Graces.  The  excessive  insistence  upon  this  is 
partly  due  to  the  peculiarities  of  his  hearer  and 
his  own  quaint  illusion  that  the  way  to  put  a  man 
at  his  ease  is  to  be  constantly  insisting  upon  his 
hopeless  awkwardness.  The  theory  is  pushed  to 
excess  when  he  says  that  Marlborough  and  Pitt 
succeeded  by  the  Graces,  not  by  supreme  business 
capacity  or  force  of  character;  and  argues  from 


I04   English  Literature  and  Society 

recent  examples  that  a  fool  may  succeed  by  dint 
of  good  manners,  while  a  man  of  ability  without 
them  must  be  a  failure.  The  exaggeration  illus- 
trates the  position.  The  game  of  politics,  that  is, 
has  become  mainly  personal.  The  diplomatist 
must  succeed  by  making  himself  popular  in  courts, 
and  the  politician  by  winning  popularity  in  the 
Hoiise  of  Commons.  Social  success — ^that  is,  the 
power  of  making  oneself  agreeable  to  the  ruling 
class — is  the  essential  precondition  to  all  other 
success.  The  statesman  does  not  make  himself 
known  as  the  advocate  of  great  principles  when 
no  great  principles  are  at  stake,  and  the  ablest 
man  of  business  cannot  turn  his  abilities  to 
account  imless  he  commends  himself  to  employers 
who  themselves  are  too  good  and  great  to  be 
bothered  with  accoimts.  You  must  first  of  all  be 
acceptable  to  your  environment ;  and  the  environ- 
ment means  the  upper  ten  thousand  who  virtually 
govern  the  world.  The  social  qualities,  therefore, 
come  into  the  foregroimd.  Undoubtedly  this 
implies  a  cynical  tone.  You  can't  respect  the 
victims  of  your  cajolery.  Chesterfield's  favourite 
author  is  Rochefoucauld  of  whom  (not  the  Bible) 
his  son  is  to  read  a  chapter  every  day.  Men, 
that  is,  are  selfish.  Happily  also  they  are  silly, 
and  can  be  flattered  into  helping  you,  little  as  they 
may  care  for  you.    ' '  Wriggle  yourself  into  power,  '* 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        105 

he  says  more  than  once.  That  is  especially  true 
of  women,  of  whom  he  always  speaks  with  the 
true  aristocratic  contempt.  A  man  of  sense  will 
humour  them  and  flatter  them;  he  will  never 
constilt  them  seriously,  nor  really  trust  them,  but 
he  will  make  them  believe  that  he  does  both. 
They  are  invaluable  as  tools,  though  contemptible 
in  themselves.  This,  of  course,  represents  the 
tone  too  characteristic  of  the  epicurean  British 
nobleman.  Yet  with  all  this  cynicism,  Chester- 
field's morality  is  perfectly  genuine  in  its  way. 
He  has  the  sense  of  honour  and  the  patriotic 
feeling  of  his  class.  He  has  the  good  nature 
which  is  compatible  with,  and  even  congenial  to, 
a  certain  cynicism.  He  is  said  to  have  achieved 
the  very  imusual  success  of  being  an  admirable 
Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland.  In  fact  he  had  the 
intellectual  vigour  which  implies  a  real  desire  for 
good  administration,  less  perhaps  from  purely 
philanthropic  motives  than  from  respect  for 
efficiency. 

For  forms  of  government  let  fools  contest ; 
What'er  is  best  administered  is  best, 

says  Pope,  and  that  was  Chesterfield's  view.  Like 
Frederick  of  Prussia,  whom  he  admires  above  all 
rulers,  he  might  not  be  over-scrupulous  in  his 
policy,  but  wishes  the  machinery  for  which  he 
is  responsible  to  be  in  thoroughly  good  working 


io6    English  Literature  and  Society 

order.  He  most  thoroughly  sees  the  folly,  if 
he  does  not  siifficiently  despise  the  motives,  of 
the  lower  order  of  politicians  to  whom  bribery 
and  corruption  represented  the  only  political 
forces  worth  notice.  In  practice  he  might  be 
forced  to  use  such  men,  but  he  sees  them  to 
be  contemptible,  and  appreciates  the  mischiefs 
resulting  from  their  rule. 

[  The  development  of  this  morality  in  the 
aristocratic  class,  which  was  still  predominant 
although  the  growing  importance  of  the  House 
of  Commons  was  tending  to  shift  the  centre  of 
political  gravity  to  a  lower  point,  is,  I  think, 
sufficiently  intelligible  to  be  taken  for  granted. 
Pope,  I  have  said,  represents  the  literary  version. 
The  problem,  then,  is  how  this  view  of  life  is  to 
be  embodied  in  poetry.  One  answer  is  the  Essay 
on  Man,  in  which  Pope  versified  the  deism  which 
he  learned  from  Bolingbroke,  and  which  was  char- 
acteristic of  the  upper  circle  generally.  I  need  not 
speak  of  its  shortcomings ;  didactic  poetry  of  that 
kind  is  dreary  enough,  and  the  smart  couplets 
often  offend  one's  taste,  I  may  say  that  here 
and  there  Pope  manages  to  be  really  impressive, 
and  to  utter  sentiments  which  really  ennobled 
the  deist  creed;  the  aversion  to  narrow  super- 
stition; to  the  bigotry  which  "  dealt  damnation 
round  the  land";  and  the  conviction  that  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        107 

true  religion  must  correspond  to  a  cosmopolitan 
humanity.  I  remember  hearing  Carlyle  quote 
with  admiration  the  Universal  Prayer — 

Father  of  all,  in  every  age, 

In  every  clime  adored, 
By  Saint,  by  Savage,  and  by  Sage, 

Jehovah,  Jove,  or  Lord, 

and  it  is  the  worthy  utterance  of  one  good  legacy 
which  the  deist  bequeathed  to  posterity.  Pope 
himself  was  alarmed  when  he  discovered  that  he 
had  slipped  tma wares  into  heterodoxy.  His  creed 
was  not  congenial  to  the  average  mind,  though  it 
was  to  that  of  his  immediate  circle.  Meanwhile, 
his  most  characteristic  and  successful  work  was 
of  a  different  order.  The  answer,  in  fact,  to 
the  problem  which  I  have  just  stated,  is  that  the 
only  kind  of  poetry  that  was  congenial  to  his 
environment  was  satire — if  satire  can  be  called 
poetry.  Pope's  satires,  the  Epistle  to  Arbuth- 
not  the  Epilogue"  and  some  of  the  Imitations 
of  Horace,  represent  his  best  and  most  last- 
ing achievement.  There  he  gives  the  fullest 
expression  to  the  general  sentiment  in  the  most 
appropriate  form.  His  singular  command  of 
language,  and,  within  his  own  limits,  of  versi- 
fication, was  turned  to  account  by  conscientious 
and  tmceasing  labour  in  polishing  his  style. 
Particular  passages,  Hke  the  famous  satire  upon 


io8    English  Literature  and  Society 

Addison,  have  been  slowly  elaborated;  he  has 
brooded  over  them  for  years;  and,  if  the  result 
of  such  methods  is  sometimes  a  mosaic  rather 
than  a  continuous  current  of  discourse,  the  extra- 
ordinary brilliance  of  some  passages  has  made 
them  permanently  interesting  and  enriched  our 
literature  with  many  proverbial  phrases.  The  art 
was  naturally  cultivated  and  its  results  appreciated 
in  the  circle  formed  by  such  men  as  Congreve, 
Bolingbroke,  and  Chesterfield  and  the  like,  by 
whom  witty  conversation  was  cultivated  as  a  fine 
art.  Chesterfield  tells  us  that  he  never  spoke 
without  trying  to  express  himself  as  well  as 
possible;  and  Pope  carries  out  the  principle 
in  his  poetry.  The  thorough  polish  has  pre- 
served the  numerous  phrases,  still  familiar,  which 
have  survived  the  general  neglect  of  his  work. 
Pope  indeed  manages  to  introduce  genuine  poetry, 
as  in  his  famous  compliments  or  his  passage  about 
his  mother,  in  which  we  feel  that  he  is  really 
speaking  from  his  heart.  But  no  doubt  Atter- 
bury  gave  him  judicious  (if  not  very  Christian) 
advice,  when  he  told  him  to  stick  to  the  vein 
of  the  Addison  verses.  The  main  topic  of  the 
satires  is  a  denunciation  of  an  age  when,  as  he 
puts  it, 

Not  to  be  corrupted  is  the  shame 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        109 

He  ascribes  his  own  indignation  to  the  "strong 
antipathy  of  good  to  bad, "  which  is  a  satisfactory- 
explanation  to  himself.  But  he  was  still  inter- 
preting the  general  sentiment  and  expressing  the 
general  discontent  caused  by  the  Walpole  system. 
His  friends,  Bolingbroke  and  Wyndham,  and 
the  whole  opposition,  partially  recruited  from 
Walpole's  supporters,  were  insisting  upon  the 
same  theme.  If,  as  I  have  said,  some  of  them 
were  really  sincere  in  recognising  the  evil,  and, 
like  Bolingbroke  in  the  Patriot  King,  trying  to 
ascertain  its  source — ^we  are  troubled  in  this 
even  by  the  doubt  as  to  whether  they  objected 
to  corruption  or  only  to  the  corrupt  influence 
of  their  antagonists.  But  Pope,  as  a  poet,  living 
outside  the  political  circle,  can  take  the  denuncia- 
tions quite  seriously  and  be  not  only  pointed 
but  really  dignified.  He  sincerely  believes  that 
vice  can  really  be  seriously  discouraged  by  lashing 
at  it  with  epigrams.  So  far,  he  represented  a 
general  feeling  of  the  literary  class,  explained  in 
various  ways  by  such  men  as  Thomson,  Fielding, 
Glover,  and  Johnson,  who  were,  from  very 
different  points  of  view,  in  opposition  to  Wal- 
pole. Satire  can  only  flourish  under  some  such 
conditions  as  then  existed.  It  supposes,  among 
other  things,  the  existence  of  a  small  cultivated 
class,  which  will  fully  appreciate  the  personalities. 


no   English  Literature  and  Society 

the  dexterity  of  insinuation,  and  the  cutting 
sarcasm  which  gives  the  spice  to  much  of  Pope's 
satire.  Yotmg,  a  singularly  clever  writer,  was 
ecUpsed  by  Pope  because  he  kept  to  denoting 
general  types  and  was  not  intimate  with  the  actors 
on  the  social  stage.  Johnson,  still  more  of  an 
outsider,  wrote  a  most  effective  and  sonorous 
poem  with  the  help  of  Juvenal;  but  it  becomes 
a  moral  disquisition  upon  human  nature  which 
has  not  the  special  sting  and  sparkle  of  Pope. 
No  later  satirist  has  approached  Pope,  and  the 
art  has  now  become  obsolete,  or  is  adopted  merely 
as  a  literary  amusement.  One  obvious  reason  is 
the  absence  of  the  peculiar  social  backing  which 
composed  Pope's  audience  and  supplied  him  with 
his  readers. 

The  growing  sense  that  there  was  something 
wrong  about  the  political  system  which  Pope 
turned  to  account  was  significant  of  coming 
changes.  The  impression  that  the  evil  was 
entirely  due  to  Walpole  personally  was  one  of 
the  natural  illusions  of  party  warfare,  and  the 
disease  was  not  extirpated  when  the  supposed 
cause  was  removed.  The  most  memorable  em- 
bodiment of  the  sentiment  was  Swift.  The 
concentrated  scorn  of  corruption  in  the  Drapier's 
Letters  was  followed  by  the  intense  misanthropy 
of  Gulliver's  Travels.     The  singular  way  in  which 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         m 

Swift  blends  personal  aversion  with  political  con- 
viction, and  the  strange  humour  which  conceals 
the  misanthropist  under  a  superficial  playfulness, 
veils  to  some  extent  his  real  aim.  But  Swift 
showed  with  imequalled  power  and  in  an  ex- 
aggerated form  the  conviction  that  there  was 
something  wrong  in  the  social  order,  which  was 
suggested  by  the  conditions  of  the  time  and 
was  to  bear  fruit  in  later  days.  Satire,  however, 
is  by  its  nature  negative;  it  does  not  present  a 
positive  ideal,  and  tends  to  degenerate  into  mere 
hopeless  pessimism.  Lofty  poetry  can  only  spring 
from  some  inner  positive  enthusiasm. 

I  turn  to  another  characteristic  of  the  literary 
movement.  I  have  called  attention  to  the  fact 
that  while  the  Queen  Anne  writers  were  never 
tired  of  appealing  to  nature,  they  came  to  be  consi- 
dered as  prematurely  "artificial."  The  common- 
est meaning  of  "natural"  is  that  in  which  it  is 
identified  with  "normal."  We  call  a  thing  nat- 
ural when  its  existence  appears  to  us  to  be  a 
matter  of  course,  which  again  may  simply  mean 
that  we  are  so  accustomed  to  certain  conditions 
that  we  do  not  remember  that  they  are  really  ex- 
ceptional. We  take  ourselves  with  all  our  pecu- 
liarities to  be  the  "  natural ' '  type  or  standard.  An 
English  traveller  in  France  remarked  that  it  was 
unnatural  for  soldiers  to  be  dressed  in  blue ;  and 


112    English  Literature  and  Society 

then,  remembering  certain  British  cases,  added 
"except,  indeed,  for  the  Artillery  or  the  Blue 
Horse."  The  English  model,  with  all  its  varia- 
tions, appeared  to  him  to  be  ordained  by  nature. 
,This  imconscious  method  of  usurping  a  general 
name  so  as  to  cover  a  general  meaning  produces 
many  fallacies.  In  any  case,  however,  it  was  of 
the  essence  of  Pope's  doctrine  that  we  should,  as 
he  puts  it,  "  Look  through  nature  up  to  nature's 
God."  God,  that  is,  is  known  through  nature, 
if  it  would  not  be  more  correct  to  say  that  God 
and  nature  are  identical.  This  nature  often 
means  the  world  as  not  modified  by  human  action, 
and  therefore  sharing  the  Divine  workmanship 
unspoiled  by  man's  interference.  Thus,  in  the 
common  phrase,  the  "love  of  nature"  is  generally 
taken  to  mean  the  love  of  natural  scenery,  of  sea 
and  sky  and  moimtains,  which  are  not  altered  or 
alterable  by  any  human  art.  Yet  it  is  said  the 
want  of  any  such  love  describes  one  of  the  most 
obvious  deficiencies  in  Pope's  poetry,  of  which 
Wordsworth  so  often  complained.  His  famous 
Preface  asserts  the  complete  absence  of  any  im- 
agery from  nature  in  the  writings  of  the  time.  It 
was,  however,  at  the  period  of  which  I  am  speaking 
that  a  change  was  taking  place  which  was  worth 
considering. 

One  cause  is  obvious.    The  Wit  utters  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        113 

voice  of  the  town.  He  agreed  with  the  gentle- 
man who  preferred  the  smell  of  a  flambeau  in 
St.  James  Street  to  any  abimdance  of  violet  and 
sweetbriar.  But,  as  communications  improved 
between  town  and  coimtry,  the  separation  between 
the  taste  of  classes  became  less  marked.  The 
great  nobleman  had  always  been  in  part  an  exalted 
squire,  and  had  a  taste  for  field-sports  as  well 
as  for  the  opera.  Bolingbroke  and  Walpole  are 
both  instances  in  point.  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley 
came  up  to  town  more  frequently  than  his 
ancestors,  but  the  Spectator  recorded  his  visits  as 
those  of  a  simple  rustic.  After  the  peace,  the 
country  gentleman  begins  regularly  to  visit  the 
Continent.  The  "  grand  tour  "  mostly  common  in 
the  preceding  century  becomes  a  normal  fact  of 
the  education  of  the  upper  classes.  The  founda- 
tion of  the  Dilettante  Club  in  1734  marks  the 
change.  The  qualifications,  says  Horace  Walpole, 
were  drunkenness  and  a  visit  to  Italy.  The 
founders  of  it  seem  to  have  been  jovial  young 
men  who  had  met  each  other  abroad,  where,  with 
obsequious  tutors  and  out  of  sight  of  domestic 
authority,  they  often  learned  some  very  queer 
lessons.  But  many  of  them  learned  more,  and 
by  degrees  the  Dilettante  Club  took  not  only  to 
encouraging  the  opera  in  England,  but  to  making 
really  valuable  archaeological  researches  in  Greece 


114    English  Literature  and  Society 

and  elsewhere.  The  intelligent  youth  had  great 
opportunities  of  mixing  in  the  best  foreign  society, 
and  began  to  bring  home  the  pictures  which 
adorn  so  many  English  coimtry  houses;  to  talk 
about  the  "  correggiosity  of  Correggio";  and  in 
due  time  to  patronise  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough. 
The  traveller  began  to  take  some  interest  even  in 
the  Alps,  wrote  stanzas  to  the  "Grande  Char- 
treuse," admired  Salvator  Rosa,  and  even  visited 
Chamonix.  Another  characteristic  change  is  more 
to  the  present  purpose.  A  conspicuous  mark  of 
the  time  was  a  growing  taste  for  gardening.  The 
taste  has,  I  suppose,  existed  ever  since  our  an- 
cestors were  turned  out  of  the  Garden  of  Eden. 
Milton's  description  of  that  place  of  residence,  and 
Bacon's  famous  essay,  and  Cowley's  poems  ad- 
dressed to  the  great  authority  Evelyn,  and  most 
of  all  perhaps  Maxwell's  inimitable  description  of 
the  very  essence  of  garden,  may  remind  us  that  it 
flourished  in  the  seventeenth  century.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  in  Oxford  how  beautiful  an  old- 
fashioned  garden  might  be.  But  at  this  time 
a  change  was  taking  place  in  the  canons  of 
taste.  Temple  in  a  well-known  essay  had  praised 
the  old-fashioned  garden  and  had  remarked  how 
the  regularity  of  English  plantations  seemed 
ridiculous  to — of  all  people  in  the  world — the 
Chinese.     By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        115 

there  had  been  what  is  called  a  "  reaction, "  and  the 
English  garden,  which  was  called  "natural,"  was 
famous  and  often  imitated  in  France,  It  is 
curious  to  remark  how  closely  this  taste  was 
associated  with  the  group  of  friends  whom  Pope 
has  celebrated.  The  first,  for  example,  of  the 
four  Moral  Epistles,  is  addressed  to  Cobham, 
who  laid  out  the  famous  garden  at  Stowe,  in 
which  "Capability  Brown,"  the  most  popular 
landscape  gardener  of  the  century,  was  brought 
up ;  the  third  is  addressed  to  Bathurst,  an  enthusi- 
astic gardener,  who  had  shown  his  skill  at  his  seat 
of  Richings  near  Colnbrook;  and  the  fourth  to 
Biirlington,  whose  house  and  gardens  at  Chiswick 
were  laid  out  by  Kent,  the  famous  landscape 
gardener  and  architect —  Brown's  predecessor.  In 
the  same  epistle,  Pope  ridicules  the  formality  of 
Chandos's  grounds  at  Canons.  A  description  of 
his  own  ga!"  len  includes  the  familiar  lines 

Here  St.  John  mingles  with  my  friendly  bowl 

The  feast  of  reason  and  the  flow  of  soul, 

And  he  (Peterborough)  whose  lightning  pierced  the 

Iberian  lines 
Now  forms  my  quincunx  and  now  ranks  my  vines, 
Or  tames  the  genius  of  the  stubborn  plain 
Almost  as  quickly  as  he  conquered  Spain. 

Pope's  own  garden  was  itself  a  model.  "Pope," 
says  Horace  Walpole,   "had  twisted  and  twirled 


ii6    English  Literature  and  Society 

and  rhymed  and  harmonised  his  little  five  acres 
till  it  appeared  two  or  three  sweet  little  lawns 
opening  and  opening  beyond  one  another,  and  the  - 
whole  surrounded  with  thick  impenetrable  woods." 
The  taste  grew  as  the  centiiry  advanced.  Now 
one  impulse  towards  the  new  style  is  said  to  have 
come  from  articles  in  the  Spectator  by  Addison 
and  in  the  Guardian  by  Pope,  ridiculing  the  old- 
fashioned  mode  of  clipping  trees,  and  so  forth. 
Nature,  say  both,  is  superior  to  art,  and  the  man 
of  genius,  as  Pope  puts  it,  is  the  first  to  perceive 
that  all  art  consists  of  "imitation  and  study  of 
nature."  Horace  Walpole  in  his  essay  upon 
gardening  remarks  a  point  which  may  symbolise 
the  principle.  The  modem  style,  he  says,  sprang 
from  the  invention  of  the  ha-ha  by  Bridgeman,  one 
of  the  first  landscape  gardeners.  The  "  ha-ha " 
meant  that  the  garden,  instead  of  being  enclosed 
by  a  wall,  was  laid  out  so  as  to  harmonise  with 
the  surrounding  coimtry,  from  which  it  was  only 
separated  by  an  invisible  fence.  That  is  the 
answer  to  the  problem;  is  it  not  a  solecism  for  a 
lover  of  gardens  to  prefer  nature  to  art?  A  garden 
is  essentially  a  product  of  art?  and  supplants  the 
moor  and  desert  made  by  imassisted  natiire.  The 
love  of  nature  as  imderstood  in  a  later  period,  by 
Byron  for  example,  went  to  this  extreme,  in  words 
at  least,  and  becomes  misanthropical  in  admiring 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        117 

the  savage  for  its  own  sake.  But  the  landscape 
gardener  only  meant  that  his  art  must  be  in  some 
sense  subordinate  to  nature;  that  he  must  not 
shut  out  the  wider  scenery  but  include  it  in  his 
designs.  He  was  apt  to  look  upon  motmtains  as 
a  backgroimd  to  parks,  as  Telford  thought  that 
rivers  were  created  to  supply  canals.  The  excel- 
lent Gilpin,  who  became  an  expovmder  of  what  he 
calls  "the  theory  of  the  picturesque,"  travelled 
on  the  Wye  in  the  same  year  as  Gray ;  and  amus- 
ingly criticises  nature  from  this  point  of  view. 
Nature,  he  says,  works  in  a  cold  and  singular  style 
of  composition,  but  has  the  merit  of  never  falling 
into  "mannerism."  Nature,  that  is,  is  a  sublime 
landscape  gardener  whose  work  has  to  be  accepted, 
and  to  whom  the  gardener  must  accommodate 
himself.  A  quaint  instance  of  this  theory  may 
be  found  in  the  lecture  which  Henry  Tilney  in 
Mansfield  Park  delivers  to  Catherine  Morland. 
In  Horace  Walpole's  theory,  the  evolution  of  the 
ha-ha,  means  that  man  and  nature,  the  landowner 
and  the  country,  are  gradually  forming  an  alliance, 
and  it  comes  to  the  same  thing  whether  one  or 
the  other  assimilates  his  opposite. 

Briefly,  this  means  one  process  by  which  the 
so-called  love  of  nature  was  growing;  it  meant 
better  roads  and  inns;  the  gradual  reflux  of 
town    into    coimtry;    and    the    growing   sense 


I 


I 


ii8    English  Literature  and  Society 

already  expressed  by  Cowley  and  Marvell,  that 
overcrowded  centres  of  population  have  their 
inconveniences,  and  that  the  citizen  should  have 
his  periods  of  communion  with  unsophisticated 
nature.  Squire  and  Wit  are  each  learning  to 
appreciate  each  other's  tastes.  The  tourist  is 
developed,  and  begins,  as  Gibbon  tells  us,  to 
"view  the  glaciers"  now  that  he  can  view  them 
without  personal  inconvenience.  This,  again, 
suggests  that  there  is  nothing  radically  new  in  the 
so-called  love  of  nature.  Any  number  of  poets 
from  Chaucer  downwards  may  be  cited  to  show 
that  men  were  never  insensible  to  natural  beauty 
of  scenery;  to  the  outburst  of  spring,  or  the 
bloom  of  flowers,  or  the  splendours  of  storms 
and  sunsets.  The  indifference  to  nature  of  the 
Pope  school  was,  so  far,  the  temporary  com- 
placency of  the  new  population  focussed  in  the 
metropolitan  area  in  their  own  enlightenment 
and  their  contempt  for  the  outside  rustic.  The 
love  of  field-sports  was  as  strong  as  ever  in  the 
squire,  and  as  soon  as  he  began  to  receive  some 
of  the  intellectual  irradiation  from  the  town  Wit, 
he  began  to  express  the  emotions  which  never 
found  clearer  utterance  than  in  Walton's  Com- 
pleat  Angler.  But  there  is  a  characteristic 
difference.  With  the  old  poets  nature  is  in  the 
background;  it  supplies  the  scenery  for  human 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        119 

action  and  is  not  itself  consciously  the  object ;  they 
deal  with  concrete  facts,  with  the  deHght  of  sport 
or  rustic  amusements;  and  they  embody  their 
feelings  in  the  old  conventions;  they  converse 
with  imaginary  shepherds;  with  Robin  Hood  or 
allegorical  knights  in  romantic  forests,  who  repre- 
sent a  love  of  nature  but  introduce  description 
only  as  a  set-ofE  to  the  actors  in  masques  01 
festivals.  In  Pope's  time,  we  have  the  abstractoi 
metaphysical  deity  Nature,  who  can  be  worshipped 
with  a  distinct  appreciation.  The  conventions 
have  become  obsolete,  and  if  used  at  all,  the  poet 
himself  is  laughing  in  his  sleeve.  The  serious 
aim  of  the  poet  is  to  give  a  philosophy  of  human 
'nature;  and  the  mere  description  of  natural 
objects  strikes  him  as  silly  unless  tacked  to  a 
moral.  "  Who  could  take  offence,"  asks  Pope, 
referring  to  his  earlier  poems,  "  when  pure  descrip- 
tion held  the  place  of  sense"?  The  poet,  that  is, 
who  wishes  to  be  "  sensible  "  above  all,  cannot 
condescend  to  give  mere  catalogue  of  trees  and 
rivers  and  mountains.  Nature,  however,  is  be- 
ginning to  put  in  a  claim  for  attention,  even  in  the 
sense  in  which  nature  means  the  material  world. 
In  one  sense  this  is  a  natural  corollary  from  the 
philosophy  of  the  time  and  of  that  religion  of 
nature  which  it  implied.  Pope  himself  gives  one 
version  of  it   in  the  Essay,  on   Man;  and  can 


I20    English  Literature  and  Society 

expatiate  eloquently  upon  the  stars  and  upon  the 
animal  world.  But  the  poem  itself  is  essentially- 
constructed  out  of  a  philosophical  theory  too 
purely  argumentative  to  lend  itself  easily  to  poet- 
ry. A  different,  though  allied,  way  of  dealing  with 
the  subject  appears  elsewhere.  If  Pope  learned 
mainly  from  Bolingbroke,  he  was  also  influenced 
by  Shaftesbury  of  the  Characteristics.  I  note,  but 
cannot  here  insist  upon,  Shaftesbury's  peculiar 
philosophical  position.  He  inherited  to  some 
extent  the  doctrine  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists 
and  repudiated  the  sensationalist  doctrine  of  Locke 
and  the  metaphysical  method  of  Clarke,  He  had 
a  marked  influence  on  Hutcheson,  Butler,  and  the 
common-sense  philosophers  of  his  day.  For  us, 
it  is  enough  to  say  that  he  worships  Nature  but 
takes  rather  the  aesthetic  than  the  dialectical  point 
of  view.  The  Good,  the  True,  and  the  Beautiful 
are  all  one,  as  he  constantly  insists,  and  the  universe 
impresses  us  not  as  a  set  of  mechanical  contriv- 
ances but  as  an  artistic  embodiment  of  harmony. 
He  therefore  restores  the  universal  element  which 
is  apt  to  pass  out  of  sight  in  Pope's  rhymed 
arguments.  He  indulges  his  philosophical  en- 
thusiasm in  what  he  calls  The  Moralists,  a 
Rhapsody.  It  culminates  in  a  prose  hymn  to  a 
"glorious  Nature,  supremely  fair  and  sovereignly 
good;  all-loving  and  all-lovely,  all-divine,"  which 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        121 

ends  by  a  survey  of  the  different  climates,  where 
even  in  the  moonbeams  and  the  shades  of  the 
forests  we  find  intimations  of  the  mysterious  being 
who  pervades  the  universe.     A  love  of  beauty  was, 
in  this  sense,  a  thoroughly  legitimate  development 
of  the  religion  of  nature.     Akenside  in  his  philo- 
sophical poem   The  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination, 
written  a  little  later,  professed  himself  to  be  a 
disciple  of  Shaftesbury,  and  his  version  supplied 
many  quotations  for  Scottish  professors  of  philo- 
sophy.    Henry    Brooke's    Universal    Beauty,    a 
kind  of  appendix  to  Pope's  essay,  is  upon  the 
same  theme,  though  he  became  rather  mixed  in 
physiological  expositions,  which  suggested,  it  is 
said,    Darwin's    Botanic   Garden.     The    religious 
sentiment    embodied    in    his    Fool    of    Quality 
charmed  Wesley  and  was  enthusiastically  admired 
by  Kingsley.     Thomson,  however,  best  illustrates 
this   current   of   sentiment.     The  fine  Hymn  of 
Nature  appended  to  the  Seasons,  is  precisely  in 
the  same  vein  as  Shaftesbury's  rhapsody.     The 
descriptions  of  nature  are  supposed  to  suggest  the 
commentary  embodied  in  the  hymn.     He  still 
describes  the  sea  and  sky  and  moimtains  with  the 
more   or  less  intention  of  preaching  a  sermon 
upon  them.     That  is  the  justification  of  the  "  pure 
description"  which  Pope  condemned  in  principle, 
and  which  occupies  the  larger  part  of  the  poem. 


122    English  Literature  and  Society 

Thomson,  when  he  wrote  the  sermons,  was  still 
fresh  from  Edinburgh  and  from  Teviotdale.  He 
had  a  real  eye  for  scenery,  and  describes  from 
.  observation.  The  English  Wits  had  not,  it  seems, 
annexed  Scotland,  and  Thomson  had  studied 
Milton  and  Spenser  without  being  forced  to  look 
through  Pope's  spectacles.  Still  he  cannot  quite 
trust  himself.  He  is  still  afraid,  and  not  without 
reason,  that  pure  description  will  fall  into  flat  prose 
and  tries  to  "raise  his  diction" — in  the  phrase  of 
the  day — ^by  catching  something  of  the  Miltonic 
harmony  and  by  speaking  of  fish  as  "  finny  tribes  " 
and  birds  as  "the  feathered  people."  The  fact, 
however,  that  he  could  suspend  his  moralising  to 
give  realistic  descriptions  at  full  length,  and  that 
they  became  the  most  interesting  parts  of  the 
poem,  shows  a  growing  interest  in  country  Hfe. 
The  supremacy  of  the  town  Wit  is  no  longer 
unquestioned;  and  there  is  an  audience  for  the 
plain  direct  transcripts  of  natural  objects  for  which 
the  Wit  had  been  too  dignified  and  polished. 
Thomson  had  thus  the  merit  of  representing  a 
growing  sentiment — and  yet  he  has  not  quite 
solved  the  problem.  His  philosophy  is  not  quite 
fused  with  his  observation.  To  make  "nature" 
teally  interesting  you  must  have  a  touch  of  Words- 
worthian  pantheism  and  of  Shelley's  "pathetic 
fallacy."    Thomson's  facts  and  his  commentary 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        123 

lie  in  separate  compartments.  To  him,  appar- 
ently, the  philosophy  is  more  important  than  the 
simple  description.  His  masterpiece  was  to  be  the  f 
didactic  and  now  forgotten  poem  on  Liberty.  It  I 
gives  an  interesting  application ;  for  there  already 
we  have  the  sentiment  which  was  to  become  more 
marked  in  later  years.  "  Liberty ' '  crosses  the  Alps 
and  they  suggest  a  fine  passage  on  the  beauty 
of  mountains.  Nature  has  formed  them  as  a 
rampart  for  the  homely  republics  which  worship 
"plain  Liberty" ;  and  are  free  from  the  corruption 
typified  by  Walpole.  That  obviously  is  the  germ 
of  the  true  Rousseau  version  of  nature-worship. 
On  the  whole,  however,  nature,  as  interpreted  by 
the  author  of  Rule,  Britannia  is  still  very  well 
satisfied  with  the  British  Constitution  and  looks 
upon  the  Revolution  of  1 688  as  the  avatar  of  the 
true  goddess.  Nature,  that  is,  has  not  yet  come 
to  condemn  civilisation  in  general  as  artificial  and 
therefore  corrupt.  As  in  practice,  a  lover  of 
nature  did  not  profess  to  prefer  the  wilderness 
to  fields,  and  looked  upon  moimtains  rather 
as  a  backgroimd  to  the  nobleman's  park 
than  as  a  shelter  for  republics;  so  in  politics 
it  reflected  no  revolutionary  tendency  but 
rather  included  the  true  British  system  which 
has  grown  up  tmder  its  protection.  Nature  has 
taken  to  lecturing,  but  she  only  became  frankly 


124    English  Literature  and  Society 

revolutionary  with  Rousseau  and   misanthropic 
with  Byron. 

I  must  touch  one  more  characteristic.  Pope,  I 
'have  said,  represents  the  aristocratic  development 
of  literature.  Meanwhile  the  ptirely  plebeian 
society  was  growing,  and  the  toe  of  the  clown 
beginning  to  gall  the  kibe  of  the  courtier.  Pope's 
'  war  with  the  dimces  "  was  the  historical  symptom 
of  this  most  important  social  development.  The 
Dunciad,  which,  whatever  its  occasional  merits,  one 
cannot  read  without  spasms  both  of  disgust  and 
moral  disapproval,  is  the  literary  outcome.  Pope's 
morbid  sensibility  perverts  his  morals  till  he 
accepts  the  worst  of  aristocratic  prejudices  and 
treats  poverty  as  in  itself  criminal.  It  led  him, 
too,  to  attack  some  worthy  people,  and  among 
others  the  "  earless  "  De  Foe.  De  Foe's  position  is 
most  significant.  A  journalist  of  supreme  ability, 
he  had  an  abnormally  keen  eye  for  the  interesting. 
No  one  could  feel  the  pulse  of  his  audience  with 
greater  quickness.  He  had  already  learned  by 
inference  that  nothing  interests  the  ordinary 
reader  so  much  as  a  straightforward  narrative  of 
contemporary  facts.  He  added  the  remark  that 
it  did  not  in  the  least  matter  whethei  the  facts 
had  or  had  not  happened;  and  secondly,  that  it 
saved  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  make  your  facts 
instead   of  finding  them.    The  result   was   the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       125 

inimitable  Robinson  Crusoe,  which  was,  in  that 
sense,  a  simple  application  of  journalistic  methods, 
not  a  conscious  attempt  to  create  a  new  variety  of 
novel.  Alexander  Selkirk  had  very  little  to  tell 
about  his  remarkable  experience ;  and  so  De  Foe, 
instead  of  confining  himself  like  the  ordinary 
interviewer  to  facts,  proceeded  to  tell  a  most 
circumstantial  and  elaborate  lie — for  which  we  are 
all  grateful.  He  was  doing  far  more  than  he 
meant.  De  Foe,  as  the  most  thorough  type  of 
the  English  class  to  which  he  belonged,  could  not 
do  otherwise  than  make  his  creation  a  perfect 
embodiment  of  his  owti  qualities.  Robinson 
Crusoe  became,  we  know,  a  favoiirite  of  Rousseau, 
and  has  supplied  innumerable  illustrations  to 
writers  on  Political  Economy.  One  reason  is 
that  Crusoe  is  the  very  incarnation  of  indivi- 
dualism; thrown  entirely  upon  his  own  resources, 
he  takes  the  position  with  indoniitable  pluck; 
adapts  himself  to  the  inevitable  as  quietly  and 
sturdily  as  may  be ;  makes  himself  thoroughly  at 
home  in  a  desert  island,  and,  as  soon  as  he  meets 
a  native,  summarily  annexes  him,  and  makes  him 
thoroughly  useful.  He  comes  up  smiling  after 
many  years  as  if  he  had  been  all  the  time  in 
a  shop  in  Cheapside  without  a  hair  turned.  This 
exemplary  person  not  only  embodies  the  type 
of  middle-class  Briton,  but  represents  his  most 


126    English  Literature  and  Society 

romantic  aspirations.  In  those  days  the  civilised 
world  was  still  surrounded  by  the  dim  mysterious 
regions,  where  geographers  placed  elephants  in- 
stead of  towns,  but  where  the  adventiirous  Briton 
was  beginning  to  push  his  way  into  strange  na- 
tive confines  and  to  oust  the  wretched  foreigner, 
Dutch,  French,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese,  who  had 
dared  to  anticipate  him.  Crusoe  is  the  voice  of 
the  race  which  was  to  be  stirred  by  the  story  of 
Jenkins's  ear  and  lay  the  foundation  of  the  Empire. 
Meanwhile,  as  a  literary  work,  it  showed  most 
effectually  the  power  of  homely  realism.  There 
is  no  bother  about  dignity  or  attempt  to  reveal 
the  eloquence  of  the  polished  Wit.  It  is  precisely 
the  plain  downright  English  vernacular  which  is 
thoroughly  intelligible  to  everybody  who  is  capa- 
ble of  reading.  The  Wit,  too,  as  Swift  sufficiently 
proved,  could  be  a  consummate  master  of  that 
kind  of  writing  on  occasion,  and  Gulliver  probably 
showed  something  to  Crusoe.  But  for  us  the 
interest  is  the  development  of  a  new  class  of 
readers,  who  will  not  bother  about  canons  of  taste 
or  care  for  skill  in  working  upon  the  old  conven- 
tional methods,  but  can  be  profoundly  interested 
in  a  straightforward  narrative  adapted  to  the 
simplest  imderstandings.  Pope's  contempt  for 
the  dunces  meant  that  the  lower  classes  were  the 
objects  of  supreme  contempt  to  the  aristocratic 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        127 

circle,  whose  culture  they  did  not  share.  But 
De  Foe  was  showing  in  a  new  sense  of  the  word 
the  advantage  of  an  appeal  to  nature;  for  the 
true  life  and  vigour  of  the  nation  were  coming  to 
be  embodied  in  the  class  which  was  spontaneously- 
developing  its  own  ideals  and  beginning  to  regard 
the  culture  of  the  upper  circle  as  artificial  in  the 
objectionable  sense.  Outside  the  polished  circle  of 
Wits  we  have  the  middle  class  which  is  beginning 
to  read,  and  will  read,  what  it  really  likes  without 
bothering  about  Aristotle  or  M.  Bossu;  as,  in 
the  other  direction,  the  assimilation  between  town 
and  country  is  incidentally  suggesting  a  wider 
range  of  topics,  and  giving  a  new  expression  to 
conditions  which  had  for  some  time  been  without 
expression. 


IV 

(I739-I763) 

f  AM  now  to  speak  of  the  quarter  bf  a  centiiry 
*  which  succeeded  the  fall  of  Walpole,  and 
includes  two  singularly  contrasted  periods.  Wal- 
pole's  fall  meant  the  accession  to  power  of  the 
heterogeneous  body  of  statesmen  whose  virtuous 
indignation  had  been  raised  by  his  corrupt  prac- 
tices. Some  of  them,  as  Carteret,  Pulteney,  Ches- 
terfield, were  men  of  great  ability;  but,  after  a 
series  of  shifting  combinations  and  personal  intri- 
gues, the  final  result  was  the  triumph  of  the  Pel- 
hams — the  grotesque  Duke  of  Newcastle  and  his 
brother,  who  owed  their  success  mainly  to  skill  in 
the  art  of  parliamentary  management.  The  oppo- 
sition had  ousted  Walpole  by  taking  advantage  of 
the  dumb  instinct  which  impelled  us  to  go  to  war 
with  Spain;  and  distracted  by  the  interests  of 
Hanover  and  the  balance  of  power  we  had 
plimged  into  that  complicated  series  of  wars  which 
lasted  for  some  ten  years,  and  passes  all  powers  of 
the  ordinary  human  intellect  to  tmderstand  or  re- 
member.    For  what  particular  reason  Englishmen 

128 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        129 

were  fighting  at  Dettingen  or  Fontenoy  or  Lauffeld 
is  a  question  which  a  man  can  only  answer  when  he 
has  been  specially  crammed  for  examination  and 
his  knowledge  has  not  begim  to  ooze  out;  while 
the  abnormal  incapacity  of  our  rulers  was  dis- 
played at  the  attack  upon  Carthagena  or  during 
the  Pretender's  rharch  into  England.  The  history 
becomes  a  shifting  chaos  marked  by  no  definite 
policy,  and  the  ship  of  State  is  being  steered  at 
random  as  one  or  other  of  the  competitors  for 
rule  manages  to  grasp  the  helm  for  a  moment. 
Then  after  another  period  of  aimless  intrigues  the 
nation  seems  to  rouse  itself;  and  finding  at  last 
a  statesman  who  has  a  distinct  purpose  and  can 
appeal  to  a  great  patriotic  sentiment,  takes  the 
leading  part  in  Europe,  wins  a  series  of  victories, 
and  lays  the  foundation  of  the  British  Empire  in 
America  and  India.  Under  Walpole's  rule  the 
House  of  Commons  had  become  definitely  the 
dominant  political  body.  The  minister  who 
could  command  it  was  master  of  the  position. 
The  higher  aristocracy  are  still  in  possession  of 
great  influence,  but  they  are  ceasing  to  be  the 
adequate  representatives  of  the  great  political 
forces.  They  are  in  the  comfortable  position 
of  having  completely  established  their  own 
privileges,  and  do  not  see  any  reason  for  ex- 
tending privileges  to   others.     Success  depends 


I30   English  Literature  and  Society 

upon  personal  intrigues  among  themselves  and 
upon  a  proper  manipulation  of  the  Lower  House, 
which,  though  no  overt  constitutional  change  has 
taken  place,  is  comiag  to  be  more  decidedly 
influenced  by  the  interests  of  the  moneyed  men 
and  the  growing  middle  classes.  Pitt  and  New- 
castle represent  the  two  classes  which  are  coming 
into  distinct  antagonism.  Pitt's  power  rested 
upon  the  general  national  sentiment.  "  You  have 
taught  me, "  as  George  II.  said  to  him,  "  to  look  for 
the  sense  of  my  people  in  other  places  than  the 
House  of  Commons."  The  House  of  Commons, 
that  is,  should  not  derive  its  whole  authority 
from  the  selfish  interest  of  the  borough-mongers 
but  from  the  great  outside  current  of  patriotic 
sentiment  and  aspiration.  But  public  opinion 
was  not  yet  powerful  enough  to  support  the  great 
minister  without  an  alliance  with  the  master  of 
the  small  arts  of  intrigue.  The  general  senti- 
ment of  discontent  which  had  been  raised  by 
Walpole  was  therefore  beginning  to  widen  and 
deepen  and  to  take  a  different  form.  The  root 
of  the  evil,  as  people  began  to  feel,  was  not  in  the 
individual  Walpole,  but  in  the  system  which  he 
represented.  Brown's  Estimate  is  often  noticed 
in  illustration.  Brown  convinced  his  readers,  as 
Macaulay  puts  it,  that  they  were  a  race  of  cowards 
and   scoundrels,   who   richly  deserved   the  fate 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        131 

in  store  for  them  of  being  speedily  enslaved  by 
their  enemies;  and  the  prophecy  was  published 
(1757)  on  the  eve  of  the  most  glorious  war  we 
had  ever  known.  It  represents  also,  as  Macaulay 
observes,  the  indignation  roused  by  the  early 
failures  of  the  war  and  the  demand  that  Pitt 
should  take  the  helm.  Brown  was  a  very  clever, 
though  not  a  very  profound,  writer.  A  similar 
and  more  remarkable  utterance  had  been  made 
some  years  before  (1749)  by  the  remarkable 
thinker,  David  Hartley.  The  world,  he  said, 
was  in  the  most  critical  state  ever  known.  He 
attributes  the  evil  to  the  growth  of  infidelity  in 
the  upper  classes;  their  general  immorality; 
their  sordid  self-interest,  which  was  almost  the 
sole  motive  of  action  of  the  ministers;  the  con- 
tempt for  authority  of  all  their  superiors;  the 
worldly-mindedness  of  the  clergy  and  the  general 
carelessness  as  to  education.  These  sentiments 
are  not  the  mere  platitudes  common  to  moralists 
in  all  ages.  They  are  pointed  and  emphasised  by 
the  state  of  political  and  social  life  in  the  period. 
Besides  the  selfishness  and  want  of  principle  of 
the  upper  classes,  one  fact  upon  which  Hartley 
insists  is  sufficiently  familiar.  The  Church  it  is  * 
obvious  had  been  paralysed.  It  had  no  corporate 
activity;  it  was  in  thorough  subjection  to  the 
aristocracy;  the  highest  preferments  were  to  be 


132    English  Literature  and  Society 

won  by  courting  such  men  as  Newcastle,  and  not 
by  learning  or  by  active  discharge  of  duty;  and 
the  ordinary  parson,  though  he  might  be  thor- 
oughly respectable  and  amiable,  was  depend- 
ent upon  the  squire  as  his  superior  upon  the 
ministers.  He  took  things  easily  enough  to 
verify  Hartley's  remarks.  We  must  infer  from 
later  history  that  a  true  diagnosis  would  not  have 
been  so  melancholy  as  Hartley  supposed.  The 
nation  was  not  corrupt  at  the  core.  It  was  full 
of  energy ;  and  rapidly  developing  in  many  direc- 
tions. The  upper  classes,  who  had  gained  all 
they  wanted,  were  comfortable  and  irresponsible ; 
not  yet  seriously  threatened  by  agitators ;  able  to 
carry  on  a  traffic  in  sinecures  and  pensions,  and 
demoralised  as  every  corporate  body  becomes 
demoralised  which  has  no  fimctions  to  discharge 
in  proportion  to  capacities.  The  Church  natur- 
ally shared  the  indolence  of  its  rulers  and  patrons. 
Hartley  exhorts  the  clergy  to  take  an  example 
from  the  energy  of  the  Methodists  instead  of 
abusing  them.  Wesley  had  begun  his  remarkable 
missionary  career  in  1738,  and  the  rapid  growth 
of  his  following  is  a  familiar  proof  on  the  one 
side  of  the  indolence  of  the  established  authorities, 
and  on  the  other  of  the  strength  of  the  demand 
for  reform  in  classes  to  which  he  appealed.  If, 
that  is,  the  clergy  were  not  up  to  their  duties, 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        133 

Wesley's  success  shows  that  there  was  a  strong 
sense  of  existing  moral  and  social  evils  which 
only  required  an  energetic  leader  to  form  a 
powerful  organisation.  I  need  not  attempt  to 
inquire  into  the  causes  of  the  Wesleyan  and 
Evangelical  movement,  but  must  note  one  char- 
acteristic— it  had  not  an  intellectual  but  a  sound 
moral  origin.  Wesley  takes  his  creed  for  granted, 
and  it  was  the  creed,  so  far  as  they  had  one,  of  the 
masses  of  the  nation.  He  is  shocked  by  perjury, 
drunkenness,  corruption,  and  so  forth,  but  has 
not  seriously  to  meet  scepticism  of  the  speculative 
variety.  If  Wesley  did  not,  like  the  leader  of 
another  Oxford  movement,  feel  bound  to  clear  up 
the  logical  basis  of  his  religious  beliefs,  he  had  of 
course  to  confront  deism,  but  could  set  it  down 
as  a  mere  product  of  moral  indifference.  When 
Hartley,  like  Butler,  speaks  of  the  general  un- 
belief of  the  day,  he  was  no  doubt  correct  within 
limits.  In  the  upper  social  sphere  the  tone  was 
sceptical.  Not  only  Bolingbroke  but  such  men 
as  Chesterfield  and  Walpole  were  indifferent  or 
contemptuous.  They  were  prepared  to  go  with 
Voltaire's  development  of  the  English  rational- 
ism. But  the  English  sceptic  of  the  upper  classes 
was  generally  a  Gallio.  He  had  no  desire  to  pro- 
pagate his  creed,  still  less  to  attack  the  Church, 
which  was  a  valuable  part  of  his  property ;  it 


134    English  Literature  and  Society 

never  occurred  to  him  that  scepticism  might  lead 
to  a  political  as  well  as  an  ecclesiastical  revolu- 
tion. Voltaire  was  not  intentionally  destructive 
in  politics,  whatever  the  real  effect  of  his  teach- 
ing; but  he  was  an  avowed  and  bitter  enemy  of 
the  Church  and  the  orthodox  creed.  Hume,  the 
great  English  sceptic,  was  not  only  a  Tory  in 
politics  but  had  no  desire  to  affect  the  popular 
belief.  He  could  advise  a  clergyman  to  preach 
the  ordinary  doctrines,  because  it  was  paying  far 
too  great  a  compliment  to  the  vulgar  to  be 
punctilious  about  speaking  the  truth  to  them. 
A  similar  indifference  is  characteristic  of  the  whole 
position.  The  select  classes  were  to  be  perfectly 
convinced  that  the  accepted  creed  was  super- 
stitious; but  they  were  not  for  that  reason  to 
attack  it.  To  the  statesman,  as  Gibbon  was  to 
point  out,  a  creed  is  equally  useful,  true,  or  false ; 
and  the  English  clergy,  though  bound  to  use 
orthodox  language,  were  far  too  well  in  hand  to  be 
regarded  as  possible  persecutors.  Even  in  Scot- 
land they  made  no  serious  attempt  to  suppress 
Hume;  he  had  only  to  cover  his  opinions  by 
some  decent  professions  of  belief.  One  symptom 
of  the  general  state  of  mind  is  the  dying  out  of 
the  deist  controversies.  The  one  great  divine, 
according  to  Brown's  Estimate,  was  Warburton, 
the  colossus,  he  says,  who  bestrides  the   world  ; 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        135 

and  Warburton,  whatever  else  he  may  have  been, 
was  certainly  of  all  divines  the  one  whose  argu- 
ment is  most  palpably  fictitious,  if  not  absolutely 
insincere.  He  marks,  however,  the  tendency  of 
the  argument  to  become  historical.  Like  a  much 
acuter  writer,  Conyers  Middleton,  he  is  occupied 
with  the  curious  problem:  how  do  we  reconcile 
the  admission  that  miracles  never  happen  with 
the  belief  that  they  once  happened? — or  are  the 
two  beliefs  reconcilable?  That  means,  is  history 
continuous  ?  But  it  also  means  that  the  problems 
of  abstract  theology  were  passing  out  of  sight,  and 
that  speculation  was  turning  to  the  historical 
and  scientific  problems.  Hartley  was  expounding 
the  association  principle  which  became  the  main 
doctrine  of  the  empirical  school,  and  Hume  was 
teaching  ethics  upon  the  same  basis,  and  turning 
from  speculation  to  political  history.  The  main 
reason  of  this  intellectual  indifference  was  the 
social  condition  under  which  the  philosophical 
theory  found  no  strong  current  of  political  dis- 
content with  which  to  form  an  alliance.  The 
middle  classes,  which  are  now  growing  in  strength 
and  influence,  had  been  indifferent  to  the  discus- 
sions going  on  above  their  heads.  The  more 
enlightened  clergy  had,  of  course,  been  engaged 
in  the  direct  controversy,  and  had  adopted  a  kind 
of  mild  common-sense  rationalism  which  implied 


136    English  Literature  and  Society 

complete  indifference  to  the  dogmatic  disputes 
of  the  preceding  century.  The  Methodist  move- 
ment produced  a  little  revival  of  the  Calvinist 
and  Arminian  controversy.  But  the  beliefs  of 
the  great  mass  of  the  population  were  not  mater- 
ially affected;  they  held  by  sheer  force  of 
inertia  to  the  old  traditions,  and  still  took  them- 
selves to  be  good  orthodox  Protestants,  though 
they  had  been  unconsciously  more  affected  by 
the  permeation  of  rationalism  than  they  realised. 
So  much  must  be  said,  because  the  literary  work 
^was  being  more  and  more  distinctly  addressed 
/  to  the  middle  class.  The  literary  profession  is 
now  taking  more  of  the  modern  form.  Grub 
Street  is  rapidly  becoming  respectable,  and  its 
denizens — as  Beauclerk  said  of  Johnson  when  he 
got  his  pension — will  be  able  to  "purge  and  live 
cleanly  like  gentlemen. ' '  Johnson's  incomparable 
letter  (1755)  rejecting  Chesterfield's  attempt  to 
impose  his  patronage,  is  the  familiar  indication  of 
the  change.  Johnson  had  been  labouring  in  the 
employment  of  the  booksellers,  and  always,  unlike 
some  more  querulous  authors,  declares  that  they 
were  fair  and  liberal  patrons — though  it  is  true 
that  he  had  to  knock  down  one  of  them  with  a 
folio.  Other  writers  of  less  fame  can  turn  an 
honest  penny  by  providing  popular  literature  of 
the  heavier  kind.     There  is  a  demand  for  "useful 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        137 

information."  There  was  John  Campbell,  for 
example,  the  "richest  author,"  said  Johnson,  who 
ever  grazed  "  the  common  of  literature, "  who  con- 
tributed to  the  Modern  Universal  History,  the  Bio- 
graphica  Britannica,  and  wrote  the  Lives  of  the 
Admirals  and  the  Political  Survey  of  Great  Britain, 
and  innumerable  historical  and  statistical  works; 
and  the  queer  adventurer  Sir  John  Hill,  who 
turned  out  book  after  book  with  marvellous 
rapidity  and  impudence,  and  is  said  to  have  really 
had  some  knowledge  of  botany.  The  industrious 
drudges  and  clever  charlatans  could  make  a  re- 
spectable income.  Smollett  is  a  superior  example, 
whose  "  literary  factory, "  as  it  has  been  said,  "  was 
in  full  swing"  at  this  period,  and  who,  besides  his 
famous  novels,  was  journalist,  historian,  and  au- 
thor of  all  work,  and  managed  to  keep  himself 
afloat,  though  he  also  contrived  to  exceed  his  in- 
come and  was  supported  by  a  number  of  inferior 
"myrmidons"  who  helped  to  turn  out  his  hack 
work.  He  describes  the  author's  position  in 
a  famous  passage  in  Humphry  Clinker  (1756). 
Smollett  also  started  the  Critical  Review  in  rivalry 
to  the  Monthly  Review,  begun  by  Griffiths  a  few 
years  before  (1749),  and  these  two  were  for  a 
long  time  the  only  precursors  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  and  marked  an  advance  upon  the  old 
Gentleman's  Magazine.     In  other  words,  we  have 


138    English  Literature  and  Society 

the  beginning  of  a  new  tribunal  or  literary  Star 
Chamber.  The  author  has  not  to  inquire  what 
is  said  of  his  performances  in  the  coffee-houses, 
where  the  Wits  gathered  under  the  presidency  of 
Addison  or  Swift.  The  professional  critic  has 
appeared  who  will  make  it  his  regular  business  to 
give  an  accoimt  of  all  new  books,  and  though  his 
reviews  are  still  comparatively  meagre  and  apt  to 
be  mere  analyses,  it  is  implied  that  a  kind  of 
public  opinion  is  growing  up  which  will  decide 
upon  his  merits,  and  upon  which  his  success  or 
failure  will  depend.  That  means  again  that  the 
readers  to  whom  he  is  to  appeal  are  mainly  the 
middle  class,  who  are  not  very  highly  cultivated, 
but  who  have  at  any  rate  reached  the  point  of 
reading  their  newspaper  and  magazine  regularly, 
and  buy  books  enough  to  make  it  worth  while 
to  supply  the  growing  demand.  The  nobleman 
has  ceased  to  consider  the  patronage  of  authors 
as  any  part  of  his  duty,  and  the  tradition  which 
made  him  consider  writing  poetry  as  a  proper 
accomplishment  is  dying  out.  Since  that  time  our 
aristocracy  as  such  has  been  normally  illiterate. 
Peers — Byron,  for  example — ^have  occasionally 
written  books;  and  more  than  one  person  of 
quality  has,  like  Fox,  kept  up  the  interest  in 
classical  literature  which  he  acquired  at  a  public 
school,  and  added  a  charm  to  his  parliamentary 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         139 

oratory.  The  great  man,  too,  as  I  have  said, 
could  take  his  chance  in  political  writing,  and 
occasionally  condescend  to  show  his  skill  at  an 
essay  of  the  Spectator  model.  But  a  certain 
contempt  for  the  professional  writer  is  becoming 
characteristic,  even  of  men  like  Horace  Walpole, 
who  have  a  real  taste  for  literature.  He  is  in- 
clined to  say,  as  Chesterfield  put  it  in  a  famous 
speech,  "We,  my  lords,  may  thank  Heaven  that 
we  have  something  better  than  our  brains  to 
depend  upon."  As  literature  becomes  more  of 
a  regular  profession,  your  noble  wishes  to  show 
his  independence  of  anything  like  a  commercial 
pursuit.  Walpole  can  speak  politely  to  men  like 
Gibbon,  and  even  to  Hume,  who  have  some 
claim  to  be  gentlemen  as  well  as  authors;  but 
he  feels  that  he  is  condescending  even  to  them, 
and  has  nothing  but  contemptuous  aversion  for 
a  Johnson,  whose  claim  to  consideration  certainly 
did  not  include  any  special  refinement.  Johnson 
and  his  circle  had  still  an  odour  of  Grub  Street, 
which  is  only  to  be  kept  at  a  distance  more  care- 
fully because  it  is  in  a  position  of  comparative 
independence.  Meanwhile,  the  author  himself 
holds  by  the  authority  of  Addison  and  Pope. 
They,  he  still  admits  for  the  most  part,  repre- 
sent the  orthodox  church;  their  work  is  still 
taken  to  be  the  perfection  of  art,  and  the  canons 


I40    English  Literature  and  Society 

which  they  have  handed  down  have  a  prestige 
which  makes  any  dissenter  an  object  of  suspicion. 
Yet  as  the  audience  has  really  changed,  a  certain 
change  also  makes  itself  felt  in  the  substance  and 
the  form  of  the  corresponding  literature. 
1  One  remarkable  book  marks  the  opening  of 
fthe  period.  The  first  part  of  Young's  Night 
Thoughts  appeared  in  1742,  and  the  poem  at  once 
acquired  a  popularity  which  lasted  at  least  through 
the  century.  Yoimg  had  been  more  or  less 
associated  with  the  Addison  and  Pope  circles,  in 
the  latter  part  of  Queen  Anne's  reign.  He  had 
failed  to  obtain  any  satisfactory  share  of  the 
patronage  which  came  to  some  of  his  fellows. 
He  is  still  a  Wit  till  he  has  to  take  orders  for  a 
college  living  as  the  old  Wits'  circle  is  decaying. 
He  tried  with  little  success  to  get  something  by 
attaching  himself  to  some  questionable  patrons 
who  were  induced  to  carry  on  the  practice,  and 
the  want  of  due  recognition  left  him  to  the  end 
of  his  life  as  a  man  with  a  grievance.  He  had 
tried  poetical  epistles,  and  satires,  and  tragedies 
with  imdeniable  success  and  had  shown  imdeni- 
able  ability.  Yet  somehow  or  other  he  had  not, 
one  may  say,  emerged  from  the  second  class  till 
in  the  Night  Thoughts  he  opened  a  new  vein 
which  exactly  met  the  contemporary  taste.  The 
success  was  no  doubt  due  to  some  really  brilliant 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         141 

qualities,  but  I  need  not  here  ask  in  what  pre- 
cise rank  he  should  be  placed,  as  an  author  or  a 
moralist.  His  significance  for  us  is  simple.  The 
Night  Thoughts,  as  he  tells  us,  was  intended  to 
supply  an  omission  in  Pope's  Essay  on  Man. 
Pope's  deistical  position  excluded  any  reference 
to  revealed  religion,  to  posthumous  rewards  and 
penalties,  and  expressed  an  optimistic  philosophy 
which  ignored  the  corruption  of  human  nature. 
Young  represents  a  partial  revolt  against  the 
domination  of  the  Pope  circle.  He  had  always 
been  an  outsider,  and  his  life  at  Oxford  had,  you 
may  perhaps  hope,  preserved  his  orthodoxy.  He 
writes  blank  verse,  though  evidently  the  blank 
verse  of  a  man  accustomed  to  the  "  heroic  coup- 
lets" ;  he  uses  the  conventional  "  poetic  diction" ;  he 
strains  after  epigrammatic  point  in  the  manner  of 
Pope,  and  the  greater  part  of  his  poem  is  an 
elaborate  argumentation  to  prove  the  immortality 
of  man — chiefly  by  the  argument  from  astronomy. 
But  though  so  far  accepting  the  old  method,  his 
success  in  introducing  a  new  element  marks  an 
important  change.  He  is  elaborately  and  deliber- 
ately pathetic;  he  is  always  thinking  of  death, 
and  calling  upon  the  readers  to  sympathise  with 
his  sorrows  and  accept  his  consolations.  The 
world  taken  by  itself  is,  he  maintains,  a  huge 
lunatic  asylum,  and  the  most  hideous  of  sights  is 


142     English  Literature  and  Society 

a  naked  human  heart.  We  are,  indeed,  to  find 
sufficient  consolation  from  the  belief  in  immor- 
tality. How  far  Yoimg  was  orthodox  or  logical 
or  really  edifying  is  a  question  with  which  I  am 
not  concerned.  The  appetite  for  this  strain  of 
melancholy  reflection  is  characteristic.  Blair's 
Grave,  representing  another  version  of  the  senti- 
/  ment,  appeared  simultaneously  and  independently. 
Blair,  like  Thomson,  living  in  Scotland,  was  out- 
side the  Pope  circle  of  wit,  and  had  studied  the 
old  English  authors  instead  of  Pope  and  Dryden. 
He  negotiated  for  the  publication  of  his  poem 
through  Watts  and  Doddridge,  each  of  whom 
was  an  eminent  interpreter  of  the  religious  senti- 
ment of  the  middle  classes.  Both  wrote  hymns 
still  popular,  and  Doddridge's  Rise  and  Progress 
of  Religion  in  the  Soul  has  been  a  permanently 
valued  manual.  The  Pope  school  had  omitted 
religious  considerations,  and  treated  religion  as  a 
system  of  abstract  philosophy.  The  new  class  of 
readers  wants  something  more  congenial  to  the 
teaching  of  their  favourite  ministers  and  chapels. 
Young  and  Blair  thoroughly  suited  them,  Wesley 
admired  Yoimg's  poem,  and  even  proposed  to 
bring  out  an  edition.  In  his  Further  Appeal  to 
Men  of  Reason  and  Religion,  Wesley,  like  Brown 
and  Hartley,  draws  up  a  striking  indictment  of 
the   manners   of   the   time.     He   denounces   the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        143 

liberty  and  effeminacy  of  the  nobility;  the  wide- 
spread immorality;  the  chicanery  of  lawyers;  the 
jobbery  of  charities;  the  stupid  self-satisfaction 
of  Englishmen;  the  brutality  of  the  Army;  the 
indolence  and  preferment  humbug  of  the  Church 
— the  true  cause,  as  he  says,  of  the  "contempt 
for  the  clergy"  which  had  become  proverbial. 
His  remedy  of  course  is  to  be  found  in  a  revival 
of  true  religion.  He  accepts  the  general  senti- 
ment that  the  times  are  out  of  joint,  though  he 
would  seek  for  a  deeper  cause  than  that  which 
was  recognised  by  the  political  satirist.  While 
Young  was  weeping  at  Welwyn,  James  Hervey 
was  meditating  among  the  tombs  in  Devonshire, 
and  soon  afterwards  gave  utterance  to  the  result 
in  language  inspired  by  very  bad  taste,  but  show- 
ing a  love  of  nature  and  expressing  the  "senti- 
mentalism"  which  was  then  a  new  discovery.  It 
is  said  to  have  eclipsed  Law's  Serious  Call,  which 
I  have  already  mentioned  as  giving,  in  admirable 
literary  form,  the  view  of  the  contemporary  world 
which  naturally  found  favour  with  religious 
thinkers. 

These  symptoms  indicate  the  tendencies  of  the 
rising  class  to  which  the  author  has  mainly  to 
address  himself.  It  has  ceased  to  be  fully  repre- 
sented by  the  upper  social  stratum  whose  tastes 
are  reflected  by  Pope.     No  distinct  democratic 


144    English  Literature  and  Society 

sentiment  has  yet  appeared;  the  aristocratic 
order  is  accepted  as  inevitable  or  natural;  but 
there  is  a  vague  though  growing  sentiment  that 
the  rulers  are  selfish  and  corrupt.  There  is  no 
strong  sceptical  or  anti-religious  sentiment;  but 
a  spreading  conviction  that  the  official  pastors 
are  scandalously  careless  in  supplying  the  wants 
of  their  flocks.  The  philosophical  and  literary 
canons  of  the  scholar  and  gentleman  have  become 
unsatisfactory;  the  vulgar  do  not  care  for  the 
delicate  finish  appreciated  by  your  Chesterfield 
and  acquired  in  the  conversations  of  polite  society, 
and  the  indolent  scepticism  which  leads  to  meta- 
physical expositions,  and  is  not  allied  with  any 
political  or  social  passion,  does  not  appeal  to 
them.  The  popular  books  of  the  preceding 
generation  had  been  the  directly  religious  books: 
Baxter's  Saint's  Rest,  and  the  Pilgrim's  Progress — 
despised  by  the  polite  but  beloved  by  the  popular 
class  in  spite  of  the  critics ;  and  among  the  Dis- 
senters such  a  work  as  Boston's  Fourfold  State,or 
in  the  Church,  Law's  Serious  Call.  Your  polite 
author  had  ignored  the  devil,  and  he  plays  a  part 
in  human  affairs  which,  as  Carlyle  pointed  out  in 
later  days,  cannot  be  permanently  overlooked. 
The  old  horned  and  hoofed  devil,  indeed,  for 
whom  De  Foe  had  still  a  weakness,  shown  in  his 
History  of  the  Devil,  was  becoming  a  little  in- 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        145 

credible;  witchcraft  was  dying  out,  though  Wes- 
ley still  felt  bound  to  profess  some  belief  in 
it;  and  the  old  Calvinistic  dogmatism,  though  it 
could  produce  a  certain  amount  of  controversy 
among  the  Methodists,  had  been  made  obsolete 
by  the  growth  of  rationalism.  Still  the  new 
public  wanted  something  more  savoury  than  its 
elegant  teachers  had  given;  and,  if  sermons  had 
ceased  to  be  so  stimulating  as  of  old,  it  could  find 
it  in  secular  moralisers.  De  Foe,  always  keenly 
alive  to  the  general  taste,  had  tried  to  supply  the 
demand  not  only  by  his  queer  History  of  the  Devil 
but  by  appending  a  set  of  moral  reflections  to 
Robinson  Crusoe  and  other  edifying  works,  which 
disgusted  Charles  Lamb  by  their  petty  trades- 
man morality,  and  which  hardly  represent  a  very 
lofty  ideal.  But  the  recognised  representative  of  ' 
the  moralists  was  the  ponderous  Samuel  Johnson. 
It  is  hard  when  reading  the  Rambler  to  recog- 
nise the  massive  common-sense  and  deep  feeling 
struggling  with  the  ponderous  verbiage  and  ele- 
phantine facetiousness ;  yet  it  was  not  only  a 
treasure  of  wisdom  to  the  learned  ladies,  Mrs. 
Chapone,  and  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Carter  and  the  like, 
who  were  now  beginning  to  appear,  but  was 
received,  without  provoking  ridicule,  by  the 
whole  literary  class.  Rasselas,  in  spite  of  its 
formality,  is  still  a  very  impressive  book.     The 


146    English  Literature  and  Society 

literary  critic  may  amuse  himself  with  the  ques- 
tion how  Johnson  came  to  acquire  the  peculiar 
style  which  imposed  upon  contemporaries  and 
excited  the  ridicule  of  the  next  generation. 
According  to  Boswell,  it  was  due  to  his  reading 
of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  a  kind  of  reversion 
to  the  earlier  period  in  which  the  Latinisms  of 
Browne  were  still  natural,  when  the  revolt  to  simple 
prose  had  not  begun.  Addison,  at  any  rate,  as 
Boswell  truly  remarks,  writes  like  a  "companion," 
and  Johnson  like  a  teacher.  He  puts  on  his 
academical  robes  to  deliver  his  message  to  man- 
kind, and  is  no  longer  the  Wit,  echoing  the 
coffee-house  talk,  but  the  moralist,  who  looks 
indeed  at  actual  life,  but  stands  well  apart  and 
knows  many  hours  of  melancholy  and  hypo- 
chondria. He  preaches  the  morality  of  his  time 
— the  morality  of  Richardson  and  Young — only 
tempered  by  a  hearty  contempt  for  cant,  senti- 
mentalism,  and  all  unreality,  and  expressing  his 
deeper  and  stronger  nature.  The  style,  however 
acquired,  has  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  man  himself; 
but  I  shall  have  to  speak  of  the  Johnsonian  view  in 
the  next  period,  when  he  became  the  acknow- 
ledged literary  dictator  and  expressed  one  main 
tendency  of  the  period. 

Meanwhile    Richardson,    as   Johnson    put    it, 
had  been  teaching  the  passions  to  move  at  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        147 

command  of  virtue.  In  other  words,  Richardson 
had  discovered  an  incomparably  more  effective  way 
of  preaching  a  popular  sermon.  He  had  begun,  as 
we  know,  by  writing  a  series  of  edifying  letters  to 
young  women;  and  expounded  the  same  method 
in  Pamela,  and  afterwards  in  the  famous  Clarissa 
Harlowe  and  Sir  Charles  Grandison.  All  his 
books  are  deliberate  attempts  to  embody  his  ideal 
in  model  representatives  of  the  society  of  his  day. 
He  might  have  taken  a  suggestion  from  Bunyan ; 
who  besides  his  great  religious  allegory  and  the 
curious  Life  of  Mr.  Badman,  couched  a  moral 
lesson  in  a  description  of  the  actual  tradesman  of 
his  time.  Allegory  was  now  to  be  supplanted  by 
fiction.  The  man  was  to  take  the  place  of  the 
personified  virtue  and  vice.  De  Foe  had  already 
shown  the  power  of  downright  realistic  story- 
telling ;  and  Richardson  perhaps  learned  something 
from  him  when  he  was  drawing  his  minute  and 
vivid  portraits  of  the  people  who  might  at  any 
rate  pass  for  being  realities.  I  must  take  for 
granted  that  Richardson  was  a  man  of  genius, 
without  adding  a  word  as  to  its  precise  quality. 
I  need  only  repeat  one  familiar  remark.  Richard- 
son was  a  typical  tradesman  of  the  period ;  he  was 
the  industrious  apprentice  who  marries  his  mas- 
ter's daughter;  he  lived  between  Hammersmith 
and  Salisbury  Court  as  a  thorough  middle-class 


\ 


148    English  Literature  and  Society 

cockney,  and  had  not  an  idea  beyond  those 
common  to  his  class;  he  accepted  the  ordinary 
creeds  and  conventions;  he  looked  upon  free 
thinkers  with  such  horror  that  he  would  not  allow 
even  his  worst  villains  to  be  religious  sceptics ;  he 
shared  the  profound  reverence  of  the  shopkeepers 
for  the  upper  classes  who  were  his  customers,  and 
he  rewarded  virtue  with  a  coach  and  six.  And 
yet  this  mild  little  man,  with  the  very  narrowest 
intellectual  limitations,  wrote  a  book  which 
made  a  mark  not  only  in  England  but  in  Europe, 
and  was  imitated  by  Rousseau  in  the  book  which 
set  more  than  one  generation  weeping;  Clarissa 
Harlowe,  moreover,  was  accepted  as  the  master- 
piece of  its  kind,  and  she  moved  not  only  English- 
men but  Germans  and  Frenchmen  to  sympathetic 
tears.  One  explanation  is  that  Richardson  is 
regarded  as  the  inventor  of  "  sentimentalism. " 
The  word,  as  one  of  his  correspondents  tells  him, 
was  a  novelty  about  1749,  and  was  then  supposed 
to  include  anything  that  was  clever  and  agreeable. 
I  do  not  myself  believe  that  anybody  invented 
the  mode  of  feeling ;  but  it  is  true  that  Richardson 
was  the  first  writer  who  definitely  turned  it  to 
account  for  a  new  literary  genus.  Sentimentalism, 
I  suppose,  means,  roughly  speaking,  indulgence  in 
emotion  for  its  own  sake.  The  sentimentalist 
does  not  weep  because  painful  thoughts  are  forced 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       149 

upon  him  but  because  he  finds  weeping  pleasant 
in  itself.  He  appreciates  the  "luxury  of  grief." 
(The  phrase  is  used  in  Brown's  Barharossa;  I  don't 
know  who  invented  it.)  Certainly  the  discovery 
was  not  new.  The  charms  of  melancholy  had 
been  recognised  by  Jaques  in  the  forest  of  Arden 
and  simg  by  various  later  poets ;  but  sentimental- 
ism  at  the  earlier  period  naturally  took  the  form 
of  religious  meditation  upon  death  and  judgment. 
Young  and  Hervey  are  religious  sentimentalists, 
who  have  also  an  eye  to  literary  elegance.  Wesley 
was  far  too  masculine  and  sensible  to  be  a  senti- 
mentalist; his  emotions  impel  him  to  vigorous 
action ;  and  are  much  too  serious  to  be  cultivated 
for  their  own  sakes  or  to  be  treated  aesthetically. 
But  the  general  sense  that  something  is  not  in 
order  in  the  general  state  of  things,  without  as  yet 
any  definite  aim  for  the  vague  discontent,  was 
shared  by  the  true  sentimentalist.  Richardson's 
sentimentalism  is  partly  unconscious.  He  is  a 
moralist  very  much  in  earnest,  preaching  a  very 
practical  and  not  very  exalted  morality.  It  is  his 
moral  purpose,  his  insistence  upon  the  edifying 
point  of  view,  his  singular  fertility  in  finding  illus- 
trations for  his  doctrines,  which  makes  him  a 
sentimentalist.  I  will  confess  that  the  last  time 
I  read  Clarissa  Harlowe  it  affected  me  with  a  kind 
of  disgust.     We  wonder  sometimes  at  the  coarse 


I50    English  Literature  and  Society 

nerves  of  our  ancestors,  who  could  see  on  the  stage 
any  quantity  of  murders  and  ghosts  and  miscel- 
laneous horrors.  Richardson  gave  me  the  same 
shock  from  the  elaborate  detail  in  which  he  tells 
the  story  of  Clarissa;  rubbing  our  noses,  if  I  may 
say  so,  in  all  her  agony,  and  squeezing  the  last 
drop  of  bitterness  out  of  every  incident.  I  should 
have  liked  some  symptom  that  he  was  anxious  to 
turn  his  eyes  from  the  tragedy  instead  of  giving  it 
so  minutely  as  to  suggest  that  he  enjoys  the  spec- 
tacle. Books  sometimes  owe  part  of  their  success, 
as  I  fear  we  must  admit,  to  the  very  fact  that  they 
are  in  bad  taste.  They  attract  the  contemporary 
audience  by  exaggerating  and  over-weighting  the 
new  vein  of  sentiment  which  they  have  discovered. 
That,  in  fact,  seems  to  be  the  reason  why  in  spite 
of  all  authority,  modern  readers  find  it  difficult  to 
read  Richardson  through.  We  know,  at  any  rate, 
how  it  affected  one  great  contemporary.  This 
incessant  strain  upon  the  moral  in  question  (a 
very  questionable  moral  it  is)  struck  Fielding  as 
mawkish  and  unmanly.  Richardson  seemed  to  be 
a  narrow,  strait-laced  preacher,  who  could  look  at 
human  nature  only  from  the  conventional  point  of 
view,  and  thought  that  because  he  was  virtuous 
there  should  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale. 

Fielding's  revolt  produced  his  great  novels,  and 
the  definite  creation  of  an  entirely  new  form  of 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         151 

art  which  was  destined  to  a  long  and  vigorous 
life.     He  claimed  to  be  the  founder  of  a  new 
province  in  literature,  and  saw  with  perfect  clear- 
ness what  was  to  be  its  nature.     The  old  romances 
which  had  charmed  the  seventeenth  century  were 
still  read  occasionally :  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Mon- 
tagu, for  example,  and  Dr.  Johnson  had  enjoyed 
them,  and  Chesterfield,  at  a  later  period,  has  to 
point  out  to  his  son  that  Calpren^de's  Cassandra 
has  become  ridiculous.     The  short  story,  of  which 
Mrs.  Behn  was  the  last  English  writer,  was  more  or 
less  replaced  by  the  little  sketches  in  the  Spectator; 
and  De  Foe  had  shown  the  attractiveness  of  a  down- 
right realistic  narrative  of  a  series  of  adventures. 
But  whatever  precedents  may  be  found,  our  un- 
fortunate ancestors  had  not  yet  the  true  modem 
novel.     Fielding  had,   like  other  hack   authors, 
written  for  the  stage  and  tried  to  carry  on  the 
Congreve  tradition.     But  the  stage  had  declined. 
The  best  products,  perhaps,   were  the  Beggar's 
Opera   and   Chrononhotonthologos   and   Fielding's 
own  Tom  Thumb.     When  Fielding  tried  to  make 
use  of  the  taste  for  political  lampoons,  the  result 
was  the  Act  of  Parliament  which  in  1737  introduced 
the  licensing  system.     The  Shakespearian  drama, 
it  is  true,  was  coming  into  popularity  with  the 
help  of  Fielding's  great  friend,  Garrick;  but  no  new 
Shakespeare  appeared  to  write  modem  Hamlets 


152    English  Literature  and  Society 

and  Othellos;  Johnson  tried  to  supply  his  place  with 
the  ponderous  Irene,  and  John  Home  followed 
with  Douglas  of  "  My  name  is  Norval "  fame.  The 
tragedies  were  becoming  more  dreary.  Char- 
acteristic of  Fie' ding  was  his  admiration  of  Lillo, 
whose  George  Barnwell  (1730)  and  Fatal  Curiosity 
(about  1736),  the  last  of  them  brought  out  under 
Fielding's  own  management,  were  remarkable 
attempts  to  revive  tragedies  by  going  to  real 
life.  It  is  plain,  however,  that  the  theatre  is  no 
longer  the  appropriate  organ  of  the  reading  classes. 
The  licensing  act  seems  to  have  expressed  the 
general  feeling  which,  if  we  call  it  Puritan,  must 
be  Puritan  in  a  sense  which  described  the  general 
middle-class  prejudices.  The  problem  which 
Fielding  had  to  solve  was  to  find  a  literary  form 
which  should  meet  the  tastes  of  the  new  public, 
who  could  not  be  drawn  to  the  theatre,  and  which 
yet  should  have  some  of  the  characteristics  which 
had  hitherto  been  confined  to  the  dramatic  form. 
That  was  the  problem  which  was  triumphantly 
solved  by  Tom  Jones.  The  story  is  no  longer  a 
mere  series  of  adventures,  such  as  that  which 
happened  to  Crusoe  or  Gil  Bias,  connected  by 
the  fact  that  they  happen  to  the  same  person; 
nor  a  prolonged  religious  or  moral  tract,  showing 
how  evil  will  be  punished  and  virtue  rewarded. 
It  implies   a  dramatic  situation  which   can  be 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       153 

developed  without  being  hampered  by  the  neces- 
sities of  stage-representation;  and  which  can  give 
full  scope  to  a  realistic  portrait  of  nature  as  it  is 
under  all  the  familiar  circumstances  of  time  and 
place.  This  novel,  which  fulfilled  those  conditions, 
has  ever  since  continued  to  flourish;  although  a 
long  time  was  to  elapse  before  any  one  could 
approach  the  merits  of  the  first  inventor.  In  all 
ages,  I  suppose,  the  great  artist,  whether  dramatist 
or  epic  poet  or  novelist,  has  more  or  less  con- 
sciously had  the  aim  w^hich  Fielding  implicitly 
claims  for  himself;  that  is,  to  portray  himian  na- 
ture. Every  great  artist,  again,  must,  in  one  sense, 
be  thoroughly  "  realistic. ' '  The  word  has  acquired 
an  irrelevant  connotation;  but  I  mean  that  his 
vision  of  the  world  must  correspond  to  the  genu- 
ine living  convictions  of  his  time.  He  only 
ceases  to  be  a  realist  in  that  wide  sense  of  the  word 
when  he  deliberately  affects  beliefs  which  have  lost 
their  vitality  and  uses  the  old  mythology,  for 
example,  as  convenient  machinery,  when  it  has 
ceased  to  have  any  real  hold  upon  the  minds  of 
his  contemporaries.  So  far  De  Foe  and  Richard- 
son and  Fielding  were  perfectly  right  and  deserv- 
edly successful  because  they  described  the  actual 
human  beings  whom  they  saw  before  them,  instead 
of  regarding  a  setting  forth  of  plain  facts  as  some- 
thing below  the  dignity  of  the  artist.     Every  new 


154    English  Literature  and  Society 

departure  in  literature  thrives  in  proportion  as  it 
abandons  the  old  conventions  which  have  become 
mere  survivals.  Each  of  them,  in  his  way,  felt 
the  need  of  appealing  to  the  new  class  of  readers 
by  direct  portraiture  of  the  readers  themselves. 
Fielding's  merit  is  his  thorough  appreciation  of 
this  necessity.  He  will  give  you  men  as  he  sees 
them,  with  perfect  impartiality  and  photographic 
accuracy.  His  hearty  appreciation  of  genuine  work 
is  characteristic.  He  admires  Lillo,  as  I  have  said, 
for  giving  George  Barnwell  instead  of  the  conven- 
tional stage  hero;  and  his  friend  Hogarth,  who 
was  in  pictorial  art  what  he  was  in  fiction,  and 
paints  the  Rake's  Progress  without  bothering 
about  old  masters  or  the  grand  style;  and  he  is 
enthusiastic  about  Garrick  because  he  makes 
Hamlet's  fear  of  the  ghost  so  natural  that  Part- 
ridge takes  it  for  a  mere  matter  of  course.  Down- 
right, forcible  appeals  to  fact — contempt  for  the 
artificial  and  conventional — are  his  strength, 
though  they  also  imply  his  weakness.  Fielding, 
in  fact,  is  the  ideal  John  Bull;  the  "good  buffalo, " 
as  Taine  calls  him,  the  big,  full-blooded,  vigorous 
mass  of  roast-beef  who  will  stand  no  nonsense,  and 
whose  contempt  for  the  fanciful  and  arbitrary 
tends  towards  the  coarse  and  materialistic.  That 
corresponds  to  the  contrast  between  Richardson 
and  Fielding;  and  may  help  to  explain  why  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       155 

sentimentalism  which  Fielding  despised,  yet  corre- 
sponded to  a  vague  feeling  after  a  real  element  of 
interest.  But,  in  truth,  our  criticism,  I  think 
applies  as  much  to  Richardson  as  to  Fielding- 
Realism,  taken  in  what  I  should  call  the  right 
sense,  is  not  properly  opposed  to  "idealism";  it 
points  to  one  of  the  two  poles  towards  which  all 
literary  art  should  be  directed.  The  artist  is  a  \ 
realist  so  far  as  he  deals  with  the  actual  life  and  the 
genuine  beliefs  of  his  time ;  but  he  is  an  idealist  so  ' 
far  as  he  sees  the  most  essential  facts  and  utters 
the  deepest  and  most  permanent  truths  in  his  own 
dialect.  His  work  should  be  true  to  life  and  give 
the  essence  of  actual  human  nature,  and  also 
express  emotions  and  thoughts  common  to  the 
men  of  all  times.  Now  that  is  the  weak  side  of 
the  fiction  of  this  period.  We  may  read  Clarissa 
Harlowe  and  Tom  Jones  with  unstinted  admiration ; 
but  we  feel  that  we  are  in  a  confined  atmosphere. 
There  are  regions  of  thought  and  feeling  which 
seem  to  lie  together  beyond  their  province.  Field- 
ing, in  his  way,  was  a  bit  of  a  philosopher,  though 
he  is  too  much  convinced  that  Locke  and  Hoadley 
have  said  the  last  words  in  theology  and  philosophy. 
Parson  Adams  is  a  most  charming  person  in  his  \ 
way,  but  his  intellectual  outlook  is  decidedly  ^ 
limited.  That  may  not  trouble  us  much ;  but  we 
have  also  the  general  feeling  that  we  are  living 


156    English  Literature  and  Society 

in  a  little  provincial  society  which  somehow  takes 
its  own  special  arrangements  to  be  part  of  the 
eternal  order  of  nature.  The  worthy  Richardson 
is  aware  that  there  are  a  great  many  rakes  and 
infamous  persons  about;  but  it  never  occurs  to 
him  that  there  can  be  any  speculation  outside  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles ;  and  though  Fielding  perceives 
a  great  many  abuses  in  the  actual  administration 
of  the  laws  and  the  political  system,  he  regards  the 
social  order,  with  its  squires  and  parsons  and  attor- 
neys as  the  only  conceivable  state  of  things.  In 
other  words  they,  and  I  might  add  their  successor 
Smollett,  represent  all  the  prejudices  and  narrow 
assumptions  of  the  quiet,  respectable,  and  in  many 
ways  worthy  and  domestically  excellent,  middle- 
class  of  the  day ;  which,  on  the  whole, is  determined 
not  to  look  too  deeply  into  awkward  questions,  but 
to  go  along  sturdily  working  out  its  own  concep- 
tions and  plodding  along  on  well-established  lines. 
Another  literary  movement  is  beginning  which 
is  to  lead  to  the  sense  of  this  deficiency.  The 
nobleman,  growing  rich  and  less  absorbed  in  the 
political  world,  has  time  and  leisure  to  cultivate 
his  tastes,  becomes,  as  I  have  said,  a  dilettante, 
and  sends  his  son  to  make  the  grand  tour  as 
a  regular  part  of  his  education.  Some  demon 
whispers  to  him,  as  Pope  puts  it,  Visto,  have  a 
taste!     He  buys  books   and   pictures,  takes   to 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        157 

architecture  and  landscape-gardening,  and  be- 
comes a  "  collector. "  The  instinct  of  "  collecting  " 
is,  I  suppose,  natural,  and  its  development  is  con- 
nected with  some  curious  results.  One  of  the 
favourite  objects  of  ridicule  of  the  past  essayists 
was  the  virtuoso.  There  was  something  to  them 
inexpressibly  absurd  in  a  passion  for  buying  odds 
and  ends.  Pope,  Arbuthnot,  and  Gay  made  a 
special  butt  of  Dr.  Woodward,  possessor  of  a 
famous  ancient  shield  and  other  antiquities. 
Equally  absurd,  they  thought,  was  his  passion  for 
fossils.  He  made  one  of  the  first  collections  of 
such  objects,  saw  that  they  really  had  a  scientific 
interest,  and  founded  at  Cambridge  the  first  pro- 
fessorship of  geology.  Another  remarkable  collec- 
tor was  Sir  Hans  Sloane,  who  had  brought  home  a 
great  number  of  plants  from  Jamaica  and  founded 
the  botanic  garden  at  Chelsea.  His  servant, 
James  Salter,  set  up  the  famous  Don  Saltero's 
museum  in  the  same  place,  containing,  as  Steele 
tells  us,  "  10,000  gimcracks,  including  a  '  petrified 
crab'  from  China  and  Pontius  Pilate's  wife's 
chambermaid's  sister's  hat."  Don  Saltero  and 
his  master  seemed  equally  ridiculous ;  and  Young  in 
his  satires  calls  Sloane  "the  foremost  toyman  of 
his  time,"  and  describes  him  as  adoring  a  pin 
of  Queen  Elizabeth's.  Sloane's  collections  were 
bought  for  the  nation  and  became  the  foundation 


158    English  Literature  and  Society 

of  the  British  Museum;  when  (1753)  Horace 
Walpole  remarks  that  they  might  be  worth  ;^8o,ooo 
for  anybody  who  loved  hippopotamuses,  sharks 
with  one  ear,  and  spiders  as  big  as  geese.  Scientific 
research,  that  is,  revealed  itself  to  contempora- 
ries as  a  childish  and  absurd  monomania,  unwor- 
thy of  a  man  of  sense.  John  Hunter  had  not  yet 
begun  to  form  the  unequalled  museum  of  physio- 
logy, and  even  the  scientific  collectors  could  have 
but  a  dim  perception  of  the  importance  of  a  minute 
observation  of  natural  phenomena.  The  contempt 
for  such  collections  naturally  accompanied  a 
contempt  for  the  antiquary,  another  variety  of 
the  same  species.  The  study  of  old  documents 
and  ancient  buildings  seemed  to  be  a  simple  eccen- 
tricity. Thomas  Hearne,  the  Oxford  antiquary, 
was  a  typical  case.  He  devoted  himself  to  the 
study  of  old  records  and  published  a  series  of 
English  Chronicles  which  were  of  essential  service 
to  English  historians.  To  his  contemporaries  this 
study  seemed  to  be  as  worthless  as  Woodward's 
study  of  fossils.  Like  other  monomaniacs  he 
became  crusty  and  sour  for  want  of  sympathy. 
His  like-minded  contemporary,  Carte,  ruined  the 
prospects  of  his  history  by  letting  out  his  belief  in 
the  royal  power  of  curing  by  touch.  Antiquarian- 
ism,  though  providing  invaluable  material  for 
histor>',  seemed  to  be  a  silly  crotchet,  and  to  imply 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        159 

a  hatred  to  sound  Whiggism  and  modern  enlighten- 
ment, so  long  as  the  Wit  and  the  intelligent  person 
of  quality  looked  upon  the  past  simply  as  the 
period  of  Gothic  barbarism.  But  an  approxima- 
tion is  beginning  to  take  place.  The  relation  is 
indicated  by  the  case  of  Horace  Walpole,  a  man 
whose  great  abilities  have  been  concealed  by  his 
obvious  affectations.  Two  of  Walpole's  school- 
fellows at  Eton  were  Gray  and  William  Cole.  Cole, 
the  Cambridge  antiquary  who  had  also  interested 
himself  in  bringing  together  a  geological  collec- 
tion was  all  but  a  Catholic,  and  in  political  sympa- 
thies agreed  with  Heame  and  Carte.  Walpole 
was  a  thorough  Whig  and  a  freethinker,  so 
long,  at  least,  as  freethinking  did  not  threaten 
danger  to  comfortable  sinecures  bestowed  upon  the 
sons  of  Whig  ministers.  But  Cole  became  Wal- 
pole's antiquarian  oracle.  When  Walpole  came 
back  from  the  grand  tour,  with  nothing  particular 
to  do  except  spend  his  income,  he  found  one  amuse- 
ment in  dabbling  in  antiquarian  research.  He  dis- 
covered among  other  things,  that  even  a  Gothic 
cathedral  could  be  picturesque,  and  in  1750  set 
about  building  a  "  little  Gothic  Castle"  at  Straw- 
berry Hill.  The  Gothic  was  of  course  the  most 
superficial  imitation;  but  it  became  the  first  of 
a  long  line  of  similar  imitations  growing  gradually 
more  elaborate  with  results  of  which  we  all  have 


i6o    English  Literature  and  Society 

our  own  opinion.  To  Walpole  himself  Strawberry- 
Hill  was  a  mere  plaything,  and  he  would  not  have 
wished  to  be  taken  too  seriously;  as  his  romance 
of  the  Castle  of  Otranto  was  a  literary  squib  at 
which  he  laughed  himself,  though  it  became  the 
forefather  of  a  great  literary  school.  The  process 
may  be  regarded  as  logical;  the  previous  genera- 
tion, rejoicing  in  its  own  enlightenment,  began  to 
recognise  the  difference  between  present  and  past 
more  clearly  than  its  ancestors  had  done;  but 
generally  inferred  that  the  men  of  old  had  been 
barbarians.  The  Tory  and  Jacobite  who  clings  to 
the  past  praises  its  remains  with  blind  affection, 
and  can  see  nothing  in  the  present  but  corruption 
and  destruction  of  the  foundations  of  society. 
The  indifferent  dilettante,  caring  little  for  any 
principles  and  mainly  desirous  of  amusement, 
discovers  a  certain  charm  in  the  old  institutions 
while  he  professes  to  despise  them  in  theory. 
That  means  one  of  the  elements  of  the  complex 
sentiment  which  we  describe  as  romanticism ,  The 
past  is  obsolete,  but  it  is  pretty  enough  to  be  used 
in  making  new  playthings.  The  reconciliation 
will  be  reached  when  the  growth  of  historical 
inquiry  leads  men  to  feel  that  past  and  present 
are  parts  of  a  continuous  series,  and  to  look  upon 
their  ancestors  neither  as  simply  ridiculous  nor  as 
objects  of  blind  admiration.     The  historical  sense 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       i6i 

was,  in  fact,  growing;  and  Walpole's  other  friend, 
Gray,  may  represent  the  literary  version.  The 
Queen  Anne  school,  though  it  despised  the  older 
literature,  had  still  a  certain  sneaking  regard  for 
it.  Addison,  for  example,  pays  some  grudging 
compliments  to  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  though  he 
is  careful  to  point  out  the  barbarism  of  their 
taste.  Pope,  like  all  poets,  had  loved  Spenser  in 
his  boyhood  and  was  well  read  in  English  poetry. 
It  was  mighty  simple  of  Rowe,  he  said,  to  try  to 
write  in  the  style  of  Shakespeare,  that  is,  in  the 
style  of  a  bad  age.  Yet  he  became  one  of  the 
earliest,  and  far  from  one  of  the  worst,  editors  of 
Shakespeare ;  and  the  growth  of  literary  interest  in 
Shakespeare  is  one  of  the  characteristic  symptoms 
of  the  period.  Pope  had  contemplated  a  history 
of  English  poetry  which  was  taken  up  by  Gray 
and  finally  executed  by  Warton.  The  develop-/ 
ment  of  an  interest  in  literary  history  naturally 
led  to  new  departures.  The  poets  of  the  period, ' 
Gray  and  Collins  and  the  Wartons,  are  no  longer 
members  of  the  little  circle  with  strict  codes  of 
taste.  They  are  scholars  and  students  not  shut 
up  within  the  metropolitan  area.  There  has  been 
a  controversy  as  to  whether  Gray's  unproductive- 
ness is  partly  to  be  ascribed  to  his  confinement 
to  a  narrow  and,  it  seems,  to  a  specially  stupid 
academical  circle  at  Cambridge.     Anyway,  living 


1 62    English  Literature  and  Society 

apart  from  the  world  of  politicians  and  fine  gen- 
tlemen, he  had  the  opportunity  to  become  the 
most  learned  of  English  poets  and  to  be  at  home 
in  a  wide  range  of  literature  representing  a  great 
variety  of  models.  As  the  antiquary  begins  to 
rise  to  the  historian,  the  poetical  merits  recog- 
nised in  the  less  regular  canons  become  manifest. 
Thomson,  trying  to  write  a  half-serious  imitation 
of  Spenser,  made  his  greatest  success  by  a  kind  of 
accident  in  the  Castle  of  Indolence  (1748) ;  Thomas 
Warton's  Observation  on  the  Faery  Queene  in  1757 
was  an  illustration  of  the  influence  of  historical 
criticism.  I  need  not  say  how  Collins  was  inter- 
ested by  Highland  superstition  and  Gray  im- 
pressed by  Mallet's  Northern  Antiquities,  and 
how  in  other  directions  the  labours  of  the  anti- 
quarian were  beginning  to  provide  materials  for 
the  poetical  imagination.  Gray  and  Collins  still 
held  to  the  main  Pope  principles.  They  try  to 
be  clear  and  simple  and  polished,  and  their  trick  of 
personifying  abstract  qualities  indicates  the  philo- 
sophical doctrine  which  was  still  acceptable.  The 
special  principle,  however,  which  they  were  be- 
ginning to  recognise  is  that  indicated  by  Joseph 
Warton's  declaration  in  his  Essay  on  Pope  (1757). 
"The  fashion  of  moralising  in  verse,"  he  said, 
had  been  pushed  too  far,  and  he  proceeded  to  start- 
tie  the  orthodox  by  placing  Spenser  above  Pope. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       163 

The  heresy  gave  so  much  offence,  it  is  said,  that 
he  did  not  venture  to  bring  otit  his  second  volume 
for  twenty-five  years.  The  point  made  by 
Warton  marks,  in  fact,  the  critical  change.  The 
weak  side  of  the  Pope  school  had  been  the  subor- 
dination of  the  imagination  to  the  logical  theory. 
Poetry  tends  to  become  rhymed  prose  because  the 
poet  like  the  preacher  has  to  expound  doctrines 
and  to  prove  by  argument.  He  despises  the  old 
mythology  and  the  romantic  symbolism  because 
the  theory  was  obviously  absurd  to  a  man  of 
the  world,  and  to  common-sense.  He  believes 
that  Homer  was  deliberately  conveying  an  alle- 
gory; and  an  allegory,  whether  of  Homer  or 
of  Spenser,  is  a  roundabout  and  foolish  way  of 
expressing  the  truth.  A  philosopher — and  a 
poem  is  versified  philosophy — ^should  express 
himself  as  simply  and  directly  as  possible.  But, 
as  soon  as  you  begin  to  appreciate  the  charm  of 
ancient  poetry,  to  be  impressed  by  Scandinavian 
Sagas  or  Highland  superstition  or  Welsh  bards, 
or  allow  yourself  to  enjoy  Spenser's  idealised 
knights  and  ladies  in  spite  of  their  total  want 
of  common-sense,  or  to  appreciate  Paradise  Lost 
although  you  no  longer  accept  Milton's  scheme  of 
theology,  it  becomes  plain  that  the  specially  poetic 
charm  must  consist  in  something  else;  that  it 
can  appeal  to  the  emotions  and  the  imagination, 


1 64    English  Literature  and  Society 

though  the  doctrine  which  it  embodies  is  as  far  as 
possible  from  convincing  your  reason.  The  dis- 
covery has  a  bearing  upon  what  is  called  the  love 
of  nature.  Even  Thomson  and  his  followers  still 
take  the  didactic  view  of  nature.  They  are  half 
ashamed  of  their  interest  in  mere  dead  objects, 
but  can  treat  skies  and  mountains  as  a  text  for 
discourses  upon  Natural  Theology.  But  Collins 
and  Gray  and  Warton  are  beginning  to  perceive 
that  the  pleasure  which  we  receive  from  a  beautiful 
prospect,  whether  of  a  mountain  or  of  an  old  abbey, 
is  something  which  justifies  itself  and  may  be 
expressed  in  poetry  without  tagging  a  special 
moral  to  its  tail.  Yet  the  sturdy  common-sense 
represented  by  Fielding  and  Johnson  is  slow  to 
accept  this  view,  and  the  romantic  view  of  things 
has  still  for  him  a  touch  of  senimtentalism  and 
affectation,  and  indicates  the  dilettante  rather 
than  the  serious  thinker,  and  Pope  still  represents 
the  orthodox  creed  though  symptoms  of  revolt  are 
slowly  showing  themselves. 


V 

(I763-I788) 

1N0W  come  to  the  generation  which  preceded 
the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution.  Social 
and  political  movements  are  beginning  to  show 
themselves  in  something  of  their  modem  form,  and 
suggest  most  interesting  problems  for  the  specula- 
tive historian.  At  the  same  time,  if  we  confine 
ourselves  to  the  purely  literary  region,  it  is  on 
the  whole  a  period  of  stagnation.  Johnson  is  the 
acknowledged  dictator,  and  Johnson,  the  "  last  of 
the  Tories, "  upholds  the  artistic  canons  of  Dryden 
and  Pope,  though  no  successor  arises  to  produce 
new  works  at  all  comparable  with  theirs.  The 
school,  still  ostensibly  dominant,  has  lost  its 
power  of  stimulating  genius;  and  as  yet  no  new 
school  has  arisen  to  take  its  place.  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge  and  Scott  were  still  at  college,  and 
Byron  in  the  nursery,  at  the  end  of  the  period. 
There  is  a  kind  of  literary  interregnum,  though 
not  a  corresponding  stagnation  of  speculative  and 
political  energy. 

Looking,  in  the  first  place,  at  the  active  world, 
165 


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1 66    English  Literature  and  Society 

the  great  fact  of  the  time  is  the  series  of  changes 
to  which  we  give  the  name  of  the  industrial 
revolution.  The  growth  of  commercial  and 
manufacturing  enterprise  which  had  been  going 
on  quietly  and  continuously  had  been  suddenly 
accelerated.  Glasgow  and  Liverpool  and  Man- 
chester and  Birmingham  were  becoming  great 
towns,  and  the  factory  system  was  being  de- 
veloped, profoundly  modifying  the  old  relation  of 
the  industrial  classes.  England  was  beginning  to 
aim  at  commercial  supremacy,  and  politics  were 
to  be  more  than  ever  dominated  by  the  interests 
of  the  "moneyed  men,"  or,  as  we  now  call  them, 
"capitalists."  Essentially  connected  with  these 
changes  is  another  characteristic  development. 
Social  problems  were  arising.  The  growth  of  the 
manufactory  system  and  the  accumulation  of 
masses  of  town  population,  for  example,  forced 
attention  to  the  problem  of  pauperism,  and  many 
attempts  of  various  kinds  were  being  made  to 
deal  with  it.  The  same  circumstances  were  be- 
ginning to  rouse  an  interest  in  education ;  it  had 
suddenly  struck  people  that  on  Sundays,  at  least, 
children  might  be  taught  their  letters  so  far  as  to 
enable  them  to  spell  out  their  Bible.  The  inade- 
quacy of  the  police  and  prison  systems  to  meet 
the  new  requirements  roused  the  zeal  of  many, 
and  led  to  some  reforms.     As  the  British  Empire 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       167 

extended  we  began  to  become  sensible  of  certain 
correlative  duties;  the  impeachment  of  Warren 
Hastings  showed  that  we  had  scruples  about 
treating  India  simply  as  a  place  where  "nabobs" 
are  to  accumulate  fortimes;  and  the  slave-trade 
suggested  questions  of  conscience  which  at  the 
end  of  the  period  were  to  prelude  an  agitation  in 
some  ways  unprecedented. 

In  the  political  world  again  we  have  the  first 
appearance  of  a  distinctly  democratic  movement. 
The  struggle  over  Wilkes  during  the  earlier  years 
began  a  contest  which  was  to  last  through  gene- 
rations. The  American  War  of  Independence  em- 
phasised party  issues,  and  in  some  sense  heralded 
the  French  Revolution.  I  only  note  one  point. 
The  British  "Whig"  of  those  days  represented 
two  impulses  which  gradually  diverged.  There 
was  the  home-bred  Whiggism  of  Wilkes  and 
Home  Tooke — the  Whiggism  of  which  the 
stronghold  was  in  the  city  of  London,  with  such 
heroes  as  Lord  Mayor  Beckford,  whose  statue  in 
the  Guildhall  displays  him  hurling  defiance  at  poor 
George  III.  This  party  embodies  the  dissatisfac- 
tion of  the  man  of  business  with  the  old  system 
which  cramped  his  energies.  In  the  name  of 
liberty  he  demands  "self-government";  not 
greater  vigour  in  the  Executive  but  less  inter- 
ference and  a  freer  hand  for  the  capitalist.    He 


1 68    English  Literature  and  Society 

believes  in  individual  enterprise.  He  accepts  the 
good  old  English  principle  that  the  man  who  pays 
taxes  should  have  a  voice  in  spending  them;  but 
he  appeals  not  to  an  abstract  political  principle 
but  to  tradition.  The  reformer,  as  so  often 
happens,  calls  himself  a  restorer;  his  political 
bible  begins  with  the  great  charter  and  comes 
down  to  the  settlement  of  1688.  Meanwhile  the 
true  revolutionary  movement,  represented  by 
Paine  and  Godwin,  appeals  to  the  doctrines  of 
natural  equality  and  the  rights  of  man.  It  is 
imequivocally  democratic,  and  implies  a  grow- 
ing cleavage  between  the  working  man  and  the 
capitalists.  It  repudiates  all  tradition,  and  as- 
pires to  recast  the  whole  social  order.  Instead 
of  proposing  simply  to  diminish  the  influence  of 
government,  it  really  tends  to  centralisation  and 
the  transference  of  power  to  the  lower  classes. 
This  genuine  revolutionary  principle  did  not 
become  conspicuous  in  England  until  it  was 
introduced  by  the  contagion  from  France,  and 
even  then  it  remained  an  exotic.  For  the  present 
the  Whig  included  all  who  opposed  the  Toryism 
of  George  III.  The  difference  between  the  Whig 
and  the  Radical  was  still  latent,  though  to  be 
manifested  in  the  near  future.  When  the  "new 
Whigs, "  as  Burke  called  them,  Fox  and  Sheridan, 
welcomed  the  French  Revolution  in  1789,  they 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       169 

saw  in  it  a  constitutional  movement  of  the  English 
type  and  not  a  thorough-going  democratic  move- 
ment which  would  level  all  classes,  and  transfer 
the  political  supremacy  to  a  different  social 
stratum. 

This  implies  a  dominant  characteristic  of  the 
English  political  movement.  It  was  led,  to  use 
a  later  phrase,  by  Whigs  not  Radicals;  by  men 
who  fully  accepted  the  British  Constitution,  and 
proposed  to  remove  abuses,  not  to  recast  the 
whole  system.  The  Whig  wished  to  carry  out 
more  thoroughly  the  platform  accepted  in  1688, 
to  replace  decaying  by  sound  timbers;  but  not 
to  reconstruct  from  the  base  or  to  override 
tradition  by  abstract  and  obsolete  theories.  His 
desire  for  change  was  limited  by  a  strong 
though  implicit  conservatism.  This  characteristic 
is  reflected  in  the  sphere  of  speculative  activity. 
Philosophy  was  represented  by  the  Scottish  school 
whose  watchword  was  common-sense.  Reid 
opposed  the  scepticism  of  Hume  which  would 
lead,  as  he  held,  to  knocking  his  head  against 
a  post — a  course  clearly  condemned  by  common- 
sense  ;  but  instead  of  soaring  into  transcendental 
and  ontological  regions,  he  stuck  to  "Baconian 
induction"  and  a  psychology  founded  upon  ex- 
perience. Hume  himself,  as  I  have  said,  had 
written  for  the  speculative  few  not  for  the  vulgar; 


\ 


170    English  Literature  and  Society 

and  he  had  now  ttimed  from  the  chase  of  meta- 
physical refinements  to  historical  inquiry.  Inter- 
est in  history  had  become  characteristic  of  the 
time.  The  growth  of  a  stable,  complex,  and  con- 
tinuous social  order  implies  the  formation  of  a  cor- 
porate memory.  Masses  of  records  had  already 
been  accumulated  by  antiquaries  who  had  con- 
structed annals  rather  than  history,  in  which  the 
series  of  events  was  given  without  much  effort  to 
arrange  them  in  literary  form  or  to  trace  the  causal 
connection.  In  France,  however,  Montesquieu  had 
definitely  established  the  importance  of  apply- 
ing the  historical  method  to  political  problems; 
and  Voltaire  had  published  some  of  his  brilliant 
surveys  which  attempt  to  deal  with  the  social 
characteristics  as  well  as  the  mere  records  of  bat- 
tles and  conquests.  Hume's  History,  admirably 
written,  gave  Englishmen  the  first  opportunity  of 
enjoying  a  lucid  survey  of  the  conspicuous  facts 
previously  embedded  in  ponderous  antiquarian 
phrases.  Hume  was  one  of  the  triumvirate  who 
produced  the  recognised  masterpieces  of  con- 
temporary literature.  Robertson's  theories  are,  I 
take  it,  superseded;  but  his  books,  especially  the 
Charles  V.,  not  only  gave  broad  surveys  but  sug- 
gested generalisations  as  to  the  development  of  in- 
stitutions, which,  like  most  generalisations,  were 
mainly  wrong,   but  stimulated  further  inquiry. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       171 

Gibbon,  the  third  of  the  triumvirate,  uniting  the 
power  of  presenting  great  panoramas  of  history 
with  thorough  scholarship  and  laborious  research, 
produced  the  great  work  which  has  not  been,  if  it 
ever  can  be,  superseded.  A  growing  interest  in 
history  thus  led  to  some  of  the  writings  of  the  time, 
as  we  can  see  that  it  was  the  natural  outgrowth 
of  the  intellectual  position.  The  rapid  widening 
of  the  historical  horizon  made  even  a  bare  survey 
useful,  and  led  to  some  recognition  of  the  import- 
ance of  guiding  and  correcting  political  and  social 
theory  by  careful  investigation  of  past  experience. 
The  historian  began  to  feel  an  ambition  to  deal 
in  philosophical  theories.  He  was,  moreover, 
touched  by  the  great  scientific  movement.  A 
complete  survey  of  the  intellectual  history  of  the 
time  would  of  course  have  to  deal  with  the  great 
men  who  were  laying  the  foundations  of  the 
modem  physical  sciences;  such  as  Black,  and 
Priestly,  and  Cavendish,  and  Hunter.  It  would 
indeed,  have  to  point  out  how  small  was  the  total' 
amount  of  such  knowledge  in  comparison  with 
the  vast  superstructure  which  has  been  erected  in 
the  last  century.  The  foundation  of  the  Royal 
Institution  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
marks,  perhaps,  the  point  at  which  the  impor- 
tance of  physical  science  began  to  impress  the 
popular  imagination.     But  great  thinkers  had  long 


172    English  Literature  and  Society 

recognised  the  necessity  of  applying  scientific 
method  in  the  sphere  of  social  and  political  inves- 
tigation. Two  men  especially  illustrate  the  ten- 
dency and  the  particular  turn  which  it  took  in 
I  England.  Adam  Smith's  great  book  in  1776 
applied  scientific  method  to  political  economy. 
Smith  is  distinguished  from  his  French  prede- 
cessors by  the  historical  element  of  his  work ;  by 
his  careful  study,  that  is,  of  economic  history,  and 
his  consequent  presentation  of  his  theory  not  as 
a  body  of  absolute  and  quasi-mathematical  truth, 
but  as  resting  upon  the  experience  and  applicable 
to  the  concrete  facts  of  his  time.  His  limitation 
is  equally  characteristic.  He  investigated  the 
play  of  the  industrial  mechanism  with  too  little 
reference  to  the  thorough  interdependence  of 
economic  and  other  social  conditions.  Showing 
how  that  mechanism  adapts  itself  to  supply  and 
demand,  he  comes  to  hold  that  the  one  thing 
necessary  is  to  leave  free  play  to  competition, 
and  that  the  one  essential  force  is  the  individual's 
desire  for  his  own  material  interests.  He  became, 
therefore,  the  prophet  of  letting  things  alone. 
That  doctrine — ^whatever  its  merits  or  defects — 
implies  acquiescence  in  the  existing  order,  and  is 
radically  opposed  to  a'Semand  for  a  reconstruc- 

\tion  of  society.     This  is  most  clearly  illustrated 
by  the  other  thinker,  Jeremy  Bentham .    Bentham, 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        i73 

unlike  Smith,  shared  the  contempt  for  history  of 
the  absolute  theorists,  and  was  laying  down  a 
theory  conceived  in  the  spirit  of  absolutism  which 
became  the  creed  of  the  uncompromising  politi- 
cal radicals  of  the  next  generation.  But  it  is 
characteristic  that  Bentham  was  not,  during  the 
eighteenth  century,  a  Radical  at  all.  He  alto- 
gether repudiated  and  vigorously  denounced  the 
"Rights  of  Men"  doctrines  of  Rousseau  and  his 
followers,  and  regarded  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence in  which  they  were  embodied  as  a  mere 
hotchpotch  of  absurdity.  He  is  determined  to  be 
thoroughly  empirical — to  take  men  as  he  found 
themr  But  his  utilitarianism  supposed  that  men's 
views  of  happiness  and  utility  were  uniform  and 
clear,  and  that  all  that  was  wanted  was  to  show 
them  the  means  by  which  their  ends  could  be 
reached.  Then,  he  thought,  rulers  and  subjects 
would  be  equally  ready  to  apply  his  principles. 
He  fully  accepted  Adam  Smith's  theory  of  non- 
interference in  economical  matters;  and  his  view 
of  philosophy  in  the  lump  was  that  there  was  no 
such  thing,  only  a  heap  of  obsolete  fallacies  and 
superstitions  which  would  be  easily  dispersed  by 
the  application  of  a  little  downright  common- 
sense.  Bentham 's  utilitarianism,  again,  is  con- 
genial to  the  whole  intellectual  movement.  His 
ethical   theory  was  substantially  identical   with 


174    English  Literature  and  Society 

that  of  Paley — the  most  conspicuous  writer  upon 
theology  of  the  generation, — and  Paley  is  as 
thoroughly  empirical  in  his  theology  as  in  his 
ethics,  and  makes  the  truth  of  religion  essentially 
a  question  of  historical  and  scientific  evidence. 

It  follows  that  neither  in  practice  nor  in  specu- 
lative questions  were  the  English  thinkers  of  the 
time  prescient  of  any  coming  revolution.  They 
denounced  abuses,  but  they  had  regarded  abuses 
as  removable  excrescences  on  a  satisfactory 
system.  They  were  content  to  appeal  to  common- 
sense,  and  to  leave  philosophers  to  wrangle 
over  ultimate  results.  They  might  be,  and  in 
fact  were,  stirring  questions  which  would  lead  to 
far  more  vital  disputes ;  but  for  the  present  they 
were  unconscious  of  the  future,  and  content  to 
keep  the  old  machinery  going  though  desiring  to 
improve  its  efficiency.  The  characteristic  might 
be  elucidated  by  comparison  with  the  other  great 
European  literatures.  In  France,  Voltaire  had 
begun,  about  1762,  his  crusade  against  orthodoxy, 
or,  as  he  calls  it,  his  attempt  to  crush  the  infamous. 
He  was  supported  by  his  allies,  the  Encyclopaedists. 
While  Helvetius  and  Holbach  were  expounding 
materialism  and  atheism,  Rousseau  had  enunciated 
the  political  doctrines  which  were  to  be  applied  to 
the  Revolution,  and  elsewhere  had  uttered  that 
sentimental  deism  which  was  to  be  so  dear  to  many 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       i75 

of  his  readers.  Our  neighbours,  in  short,  after 
their  characteristic  fashion,  were  pushing  logic  to 
its  consequences,  and  were  fully  awake  to  the  ap- 
proach of  an  impending  catastrophe.  In  Germany 
the  movement  took  the  philosophical  and  literary 
shape.  Lessing's  critical  writings  had  heralded 
the  change.  Goethe,  after  giving  utterance  to 
passing  phases  of  thought,  was  rising  to  become 
the  embodiment  of  a  new  ideal  of  intellectual 
culture.  Schiller  passed  through  the  storm  and 
stress  period  and  developed  into  the  greatest 
national  dramatist.  Kant  had  awakened  from 
his  dogmatic  theory,  and  the  publication  of  the 
Critique  of  Pure  Reason  in  1781  had  awakened 
the  philosophical  world  of  Germany.  In  both 
countries  the  study  of  earlier  English  literature, 
of  the  English  deists  and  freethinkers,  of  Shake- 
speare and  of  Richardson,  had  had  great  influence, 
and  had  been  the  occasion  of  new  developments. 
But  it  seemed  as  though  England  had  ceased  to 
be  the  originator  of  ideas,  and  was  for  the  im- 
mediate future  at  least  to  receive  political  and 
philosophical  impulses  from  France  and  Germany. 
To  explain  the  course  taken  in  the  different 
societies,  to  ask  how  far  it  might  be  due  to 
difference  of  characteristics,  and  of  political  con- 
stitutions, of  social  organism  and  individual 
genius,  would  be  a  very  pretty  but  rather  large 


176    English  Literature  and  Society 

problem.  I  refer  to  it  simply  to  illustrate  the 
facts,  to  emphasise  the  quiet,  orderly,  if  you 
will,  sleepy  movement  of  English  thought  which, 
though  combined  with  great  practical  energy  and 
vigorous  investigation  of  the  neighbouring  de- 
partments of  inquiry,  admitted  of  comparative 
indifference  to  the  deeper  issues  involved.  It  did 
not  generate  that  stimulus  to  literary  activity  due 
to  the  dawning  of  new  ideas  and  the  opening  of 
wide  vistas  of  speculation.  When  the  French 
Revolution  broke  out,  it  took  Englishmen,  one 
may  say,  by  surprise,  and  except  by  a  few  keen 
observers  or  rare  disciples  of  Rousseau,  was  as 
imexpected  as  the  earthquake  of  Lisbon. 

Let  us  glance,  now,  at  the  class  which  was  to 
carry  on  the  literary  tradition.  It  is  known  to  us 
best  through  Boswell,  and  its  characteristics  are 
represented  by  Johnson's  favourite  club.  In  one 
of  his  talks  with  Boswell  the  great  man  amused 
himself  by  showing  how  the  club  might  form 
itself  into  a  university.  Every  branch  of  know- 
ledge and  thought  might,  he  thought,  be  repre- 
sented, though  it  must  be  admitted  that  some  of 
the  professors  suggested  were  scarcely  up  to  the 
mark.  The  social  variety  is  equally  remarkable. 
Among  the  thirty  or  forty  members  elected 
before  Johnson's  death,  there  were  the  lights  of 
literature;  Johnson  himself  and  Goldsmith,  Adam 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       177 

Smith  and  Gibbon,  and  others  of  less  fame. 
The  aristocratic  element  was  represented  by 
Beauclerk  and  by  half  a  dozen  peers,  such  as 
the  amiable  Lord  Charlemont ;  Burke,  Fox,  Sheri- 
dan, and  Wyndham  represent  political  as  well  as 
literary  eminence;  three  or  four  bishops  repre- 
sent Church  authority;  legal  luminaries  included 
Dunning,  William  Scott  (the  famous  Lord 
Stowell),  Sir  Robert  Chambers,  and  the  amazingly 
versatile  Sir  William  Jones.  Boswell  and  Lang- 
ton  are  also  cultivated  coimtry  gentlemen;  Sir 
Joseph  Banks  stood  for  science,  and  three  other 
names  show  the  growing  respect  for  art.  The 
amiable  Dr.  Bumey  was  a  musician  who  had 
raised  the  standard  of  his  calling;  Garrick  had 
stiU  more  conspicuously  gained  social  respect  for 
the  profession  of  actor ;  and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
was  the  representative  of  the  English  school  of 
painters,  whose  works  still  impress  upon  us  the 
beauty  of  our  great-grandmothers  and  the  charm 
of  their  children,  and  suggest  the  existence  of  a 
really  dignified  and  pure  domestic  life  in  a  class  too 
often  remembered  by  the  reckless  gambling  and 
loose  morality  of  the  gilded  youth  of  the  day.  To 
complete  the  picture  of  the  world  in  which  John- 
son was  at  home  we  should  have  to  add  from  the 
outer  sphere  such  types  as  Thrale,  the  prosper- 
ous brewer,  and  the  lively  Mrs.  Thrale  and  Mrs. 


1 78    English  Literature  and  Society 

Montague,  who  kept  a  salon  and  was  president 
of  the  "  Blues. "  The  feminine  society  which  was 
beginning  to  write  our  novels  was  represented  by 
Miss  Bumey  and  Hannah  More;  and  the  thriv- 
ing booksellers  who  were  beginning  to  become 
publishers,  such  as  Strahan  and  the  Dillys,  at 
whose  house  he  had  the  famous  meeting  with  the 
reprobate  Wilkes.  To  many  of  us,  I  suppose,  an 
intimacy  with  that  Johnsonian  group  has  been  a 
first  introduction  to  an  interest  in  English  litera- 
ture. Thanks  to  Boswell,  we  can  hear  its  talk 
more  distinctly  than  that  of  any  later  circle. 
When  we  compare  it  to  the  society  of  an  earlier 
time,  one  or  two  points  are  conspicuous.  John- 
son's club  was  to  some  extent  a  continuation  of 
the  clubs  of  Queen  Anne's  time.  But  the  Wits 
of  the  earlier  period  who  met  at  taverns  to  drink 
with  the  patrons  were  a  much  smaller  and  more 
dependent  body.  What  had  since  happened  had 
been  the  growth  of  a  great  comfortable  middle- 
class — ^meaning  by  middle-class  the  upper  stratimi, 
the  professional  men,  the  lawyers,  clergymen, 
physicians,  the  merchants  who  had  been  enriched 
by  the  growth  of  commerce  and  manufactures; 
the  country  gentlemen  whose  rents  had  risen,  and 
who  could  come  to  London  and  rub  off  their  old 
rusticity.  The  aristocracy  is  still  in  possession 
of  great  wealth  and  political  power,  but  beneath 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        179 

it  has  gi'own  up  an  independent  society  which  is 
ahready  beginning  to  be  the  most  important  social 
stratunj  and.  the  chief  factor  in  political  and.  social 
development.  It  has  sufficient  literary  cultiva- 
tion to  admit  the  distinguished  authors  and  art- 
ists who  are  becoming  independent  enough  to 
take  their  place  in  its  ranks  and  appear  at  its 
tables  and  rule  the  conversation.  The  society  is 
still  small  enough  to  have  in  the  club  a  single 
representative  body  and  one  man  for  dictator. 
Johnson  succeeded  in  this  capacity  to  Pope, 
Dryden,  and  his  namesake  Ben,  but  he  was  the 
last  of  the  race.  Men  like  Carlyle  and  Macaulay, 
who  had  a  similar  distinction  in  later  days,  could 
only  be  leaders  of  a  single  group  or  section  in 
the  more  complex  society  of  their  time,  though 
it  was  not  yet  so  multitudinous  and  chaotic  as 
the  literary  class  has  become  in  our  own.  Talk 
could  still  be  good,  because  the  comparatively 
small  society  was  constantly  meeting,  and  each 
prepared  to  take  his  part  in  the  game,  and  was 
not  being  swept  away  distractedly  into  a  miscel- 
laneous vortex  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
humanity.  Another  fact  is  conspicuous.  The 
environment,  we  may  say,  of  the  man  of  letters 
was  congenial.  He  shared  and  uttered  the  opin- 
ions of  the  class  to  which  he  belonged.  Buckle 
gives  a  striking  account  of  the  persecution  to 


i8o    English  Literature  and  Society 

which  the  French  men  of  letters  were  exposed 
at  this  period;  Voltaire,  Buff  on,  and  Rousseau, 
Diderot,  Marmontel,  and  Morellet,  besides  a  whole 
series  of  inferior  authors,  had  their  books  sup- 
pressed and  were  themselves  either  exiled  or 
imprisoned.  There  was  a  state  of  war  in  which 
almost  the  whole  literary  class  attacked  the 
established  creed  while  the  rulers  replied  by 
force  instead  of  argument.  In  England  men  of 
letters  were  allowed,  with  a  few  exceptions,  to 
say  what  they  thought,  and  simply  shared  the 
average  beliefs  of  their  class  and  their  rulers.  If 
some  leaned  towards  freethinking,  the  general 
tendency  of  the  Johnson  circle  was  harshly  opposed 
to  any  revolutionary  movement,  and  authors 
were  satisfied  with  the  creeds  as  with  the  institu- 
tions amid  which  they  lived. 

The  English  literary  class  was  thus  content  to 
utter  the  beliefs  prevalent  in  the  social  stratum 
to  which  the  chief  writers  belonged — a  stratum 
which  had  no  special  grievances  and  no  revolution- 
ary impulses,  and  which  could  make  its  voice 
sufficiently  heard  though  by  methods  which  led 
to  no  explicit  change  in  the  constitution,  and 
suggests  only  a  change  in  the  forces  which  really 
lay  behind  them.  The  chief  political  changes 
mean  for  the  present  that  "public  opinion"  was 
acquiring  more  power;  that  the  newspaper  press 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        i8i 

as  its  organ  was  especially  growing  in  strength; 
that  Parliament  was  thrown  open  to  the  reporter, 
and  speeches  addressed  to  the  constituencies  as 
well  as  to  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  and  therefore 
the  authority  of  the  legislation  becoming  more 
amenable  to  the  opinions  of  the  constituency. 
That  is  to  say,  again,  that  the  journalist  and  orator 
were  growing  in  power  and  a  corresponding  direc- 
tion given  to  literary  talent.  The  Wilkes  agita- 
tion led  to  the  Letters  of  Junius — one  of  the  most 
conspicuous  models  of  the  style  of  the  period; 
and  some  of  the  newspapers  which  were  to  live 
through  the  next  century  began  to  appear  in 
the  following  years.  This  period  again  might 
almost  be  called  the  culminating  period  of  English 
rhetoric.  The  speeches  of  Pitt  and  Burke  and 
Fox  and  Sheridan  in  the  House  of  Commons  and 
at  the  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings  must  be 
regarded  from  the  literary  as  well  as  the  political 
point  of  view,  though  in  most  cases  the  decay 
of  the  temporary  interests  involved  has  been  fatal 
to  their  permanence.  The  speeches  are  still  real 
speeches,  intended  to  affect  the  audience  addressed 
and  yet  partly  intended  also  for  the  reporters. 
When  the  audience  becomes  merely  the  pretext, 
and  the  real  aim  is  to  address  the  public,  the 
speech  tends  to  become  a  pamphlet  in  disguise 
and  loses  its  rhetorical  character.     I  may  remark 


1 82    English  Literature  and  Society 

in  passing  that  almost  the  only  legal  speeches 
which,  so  far  as  my  knowledge  goes,  are  still 
readable,  were  those  of  Erskine,  who,  after  try- 
ing the  careers  of  a  sailor  and  a  soldier,  found 
the  true  application  for  his  powers  in  oratory. 
Though  his  legal  knowledge  is  said  to  have  been 
slight,  the  conditions  of  the  time  enabled  him  in 
addressing  a  British  jury  to  put  forward  a  political 
manifesto  and  to  display  singular  literary  skill, 
Burke,  however,  is  the  typical  figure.  Had  he 
been  a  German  he  might  have  been  a  Lessing, 
and  the  author  of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful  might, 
like  the  author  of  Laokoon,  have  stimulated  his 
countrymen  by  literary  criticism.  Or  he  might 
have  obtained  a  professorship  or  a  court  preacher- 
ship  and,  like  Herder,  have  elaborated  ideas 
towards  the  future  of  a  philosophy  of  history. 
In  England  he  was  drawn  into  the  political  vor- 
tex, and  in  that  capacity  delivered  speeches 
which  also  appeared  as  pamphlets,  and  which  must 
rank  among  the  great  masterpieces  of  English 
literature.  I  need  not  inquire  whether  he  lost 
more  by  giving  to  party  what  was  meant  for 
mankind,  or  whether  his  philosophy  did  not  gain 
more  by  the  necessity  of  constant  application  to 
the  actual  facts  of  the  time.  That  necessity  no 
doubt  limited  both  the  amount  and  the  system- 
atic completeness  of  his  writings,  though  it  also 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        183 

emphasised  some  of  their  highest  merits.  The 
English  political  order  tended  in  any  case  to 
divert  a  great  deal  of  literary  ability  into  purely 
political  channels — a  peculiarity  which  it  has  not 
yet  lost,  Burke  is  the  typical  instance  of  this 
combination,  and  illustrates  most  forcibly  the 
point  to  which  I  have  already  adverted.  Johnson, 
as  we  know,  was  a  mass  of  obstinate  Tory  pre- 
judice, and  held  that  the  devil  was  the  first  Whig. 
He  held  at  bottom,  I  think,  that  politics  touched 
only  the  surface  of  human  life;  that  "kings  or 
laws, "  as  he  put  it,  can  cause  or  cure  only  a  small 
part  of  the  evils  which  we  suffer,  and  that  some 
authority  is  absolutely  necessary,  and  that  it 
matters  little  whether  it  be  the  authority  of  a 
French  monarch  or  an  English  parliament.  The 
Whig  he  thought  objected  to  authority  on  prin- 
ciple, and  was  therefore  simply  subversive. 
Something  of  the  same  opinion  was  held  by 
Johnson's  circle  in  general.  They  were  con- 
servative both  in  politics  and  theology,  and 
English  politics  and  theological  disputes  did  not 
obviously  raise  the  deeper  issues.  Even  the 
devil-descended  Whig — especially  the  variety 
represented  by  Burke — ^was  as  far  as  possible 
from  representing  what  he  took  for  the  diabolic 
agency.  Burke  represents  above  all  things  the 
political  application  of  the  historical  spirit  of  the 


\ 


184    English  Literature  and  Society 

period.  His  hatred  for  metaphysics,  for  dis- 
cussions of  abstract  rights  instead  of  practical 
expediency;  his  exaltation  of  "prescription"  and 
"tradition";  his  admiration  for  Montesquieu  and 
his  abhorrence  of  Rousseau ;  his  idolatry  of  the 
British  Constitution,  and  in  short  his  whole 
political  doctrine  from  first  to  last,  implies  the 
profound  conviction  of  the  truth  of  the  principles 
embodied  in  a  thorough  historical  method.  No- 
body, I  think,  was  ever  more  consistent  in  his 
first  principles,  though  his  horror  of  the  Revolu- 
tion no  doubt  led  him  so  to  exaggerate  one  side 
of  his  teaching  that  he  was  led  to  denounce  some 
of  the  consequences  which  naturally  followed 
from  other  aspects  of  his  doctrine.  The  schism 
between  the  old  and  the  new  Whigs  was  not  to 
be  foreseen  during  this  period,  nor  the  coming 
into  the  foreground  of  the  deeper  problems 
involved. 

I  may  now  come  to  the  purely  literary  move- 
ment. I  have  tried  to  show  that  neither  in  philo- 
sophy, theology,  nor  political  and  social  strata, 
was  there  any  belief  in  the  necessity  of  radical 
changes,  or  prescience  of  a  coming  alteration  of  the 
intellectual  atmosphere.  Speculation,  like  politics, 
could  advance  quietly  along  the  old  paths  without 
fearing  that  they  might  lead  to  a  precipice;  and 
society,  in  spite  of  very  vigorous  and  active  con- 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         185 

troversy  upon  the  questions  which  decided  it 
was  in  the  main  self-satisfied,  complacent,  and 
comfortable.  Adherence  to  the  old  system  is 
after  all  the  general  rule,  and  it  is  of  the  change 
not  of  the  persistence  that  we  require  some  ac- 
count. At  the  beginning  of  our  period,  Pope's 
authority  was  still  generally  admitted,  although 
many  symptoms  of  discontent  had  appeared,  and 
Warton  was  proposing  to  lower  him  from  the 
first  to  the  second  rank.  The  two  most  brilliant 
writers  who  achieved  fame  in  the  early  years  of 
George  III.,  Goldsmith  and  Sterne,  mark  a  char- 
acteristic moment  In  the  literary  development. 
Goldsmith's  poems  the  Traveller  (1765)  and  the 
Deserted  Village  (1770),  and  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field (1766),  are  still  on  the  old  lines.  The  poetry 
adopts  Pope's  versification,  and  implies  the  same 
ideal;  the  desire  for  lucidity,  sympathy,  modera- 
tion, and  the  qualities  which  would  generally  be 
connoted  by  classical.  The  substance,  distin- 
guished from  the  style,  shows  the  sympathy  with 
sentimentalism  of  which  Rousseau  was  to  be  the 
great  exponent.  Goldsmith  is  beginning  to  de- 
nounce luxury — a  characteristic  mark  of  the 
sentimentalist — and  his  regret  for  the  period 
when  "every  rood  of  earth  maintained  its  man" 
is  one  side  of  the  aspiration  for  a  return  to  the 
state  of  nature  and  simplicity  of  manners.     The 


i86    English  Literature  and  Society 

inimitable  Vicar  recalls  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  and 
the  gentle  and  delicate  touch  of  Addison.  But 
the  Vicar  is  beginning  to  take  an  interest  in 
philanthropy.  He  is  impressed  by  the  evils  of 
the  old  prison  system  which  had  already  roused 
Oglethorpe  (who  like  Goldsmith — as  I  may 
notice — disputed  with  Johnson  as  to  the  evils  of 
luxury)  and  was  soon  to  arouse  Howard.  The 
greatest  attraction  of  the  Vicar  is  due  to  the 
personal  charm  of  Goldsmith's  character,  but 
his  character  makes  him  sympathise  with  the 
wider  social  movements  and  the  growth  of 
genuine  philanthropic  sentiment.  Goldsmith 
in  his  remarks  upon  the  Present  State  of  Polite 
Learning  (1759),  explains  the  decay  of  literature 
(literature  is  always  decaying)  by  the  general 
enervation  which  accompanies  learning  and  the 
want  of  originality  caused  by  the  growth  of 
criticism.  That  was  not  an  unnatural  view  at 
a  time  when  the  old  forms  are  beginning  to  be 
inadequate  for  the  new  thoughts  which  are  seek- 
ing for  utterance.  As  yet,  however,  Goldsmith's 
own  work  proves  sufficiently  that  the  new  motive 
could  be  so  far  adapted  to  the  old  form  as  to 
produce  an  artistic  masterpiece.  Sterne  may 
illustrate  a  similar  remark.  He  represents,  no 
doubt,  a  kind  of  sham  sentimentalism  with  an 
insincerity  which  has  disgusted  many  able  critics. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        187 

He  was  resolved  to  attract  notice  at  any  price — 
by  putting  on  cap  and  bells,  and  by  the  pruriency 
which  stains  his  best  work.  Like  many  con- 
temporaries he  was  reading  old  authors  and 
turned  them  to  account  in  a  way  which  exposed 
him  to  the  charge  of  plagiarism.  He  valued 
them  for  their  quaintness.  They  enabled  him 
to  satisfy  his  propensity  for  being  deliberately 
eccentric  which  made  Horace  Walpole  call  Tris- 
tram Shandy  the  "dregs  of  nonsense,"  and  the 
learned  Dr.  Farmer  prophesied  that  in  twenty 
years  it  would  be  necessary  to  search  antiquarian 
shops  for  a  copy.  Sterne's  great  achievement, 
however,  was  not  in  the  mere  buffoonery  but  in 
the  passages  where  he  continued  the  Addison 
tradition.  Uncle  Toby  is  a  successor  of  Sir 
Roger,  and  the  famous  death  of  Lefevre  is  told 
with  inimitable  simplicity  and  delicacy  of  touch. 
Goldsmith  and  Sterne  work  upon  the  old  lines, 
but  make  use  of  the  new  motives  and  materials 
which  are  beginning  to  interest  readers,  and 
which  will  in  time  call  for  different  methods  of 
treatment. 

I  must  briefly  indicate  one  other  point.  The 
society  of  which  Garrick  was  a  member,  and 
which  was  both  reading  Shakespeare  and  seeing 
his  plays  revived,  might  well  seem  fitted  to 
maintain  a  drama.     Goldsmith  complains  of  the 


1 88  English  Literature  and  Society- 
decay  of  the  stage,  which  he  attributes  partly 
to  the  exclusion  of  new  pieces  by  the  old  Shake- 
spearian drama.  On  that  point  he  agrees  as  far 
as  he  dares  with  Voltaire.  He  ridiculed  Home's 
Douglas,  one  of  the  last  tragedies  which  made 
even  a  temporary  success,  and  which  certainly 
showed  that  the  true  impulse  was  extinct.  But 
Goldsmith  and  his  younger  contemporary  Sheri- 
dan succeeded  for  a  time  in  restoring  vigour  to 
comedy.  Their  triumph  over  the  sentimentalists 
Kelly  and  Cumberland  showed,  as  Johnson  put 
it,  that  they  could  fill  the  aim  of  the  comedian, 
namely,  making  an  audience  merry.  She  Stoops 
to  Conquer  and  The  School  for  Scandal  remain 
among  genuine  literary  masterpieces.  They  are  re- 
vivals of  the  old  Congreve  method,  and  imply  the 
growth  of  a  society  more  decent  and  free  from 
the  hard,  cynical  brutality  which  disgraced  the 
earlier  writers.  I  certainly  cannot  give  a  suffi- 
cient reason  why  the  society  of  Johnson  and 
Reynolds,  full  of  shrewd  common-sense,  enjoying 
himiour,  and  with  a  literary  social  tradition, 
should  not  have  found  other  writers  capable  of 
holding  up  the  comic  mirror.  I  am  upon  the 
verge  of  a  discussion  which  seems  to  be  endless, 
the  causes  of  the  decay  of  the  British  stage.  I 
must  give  it  a  wide  berth,  and  only  note  that, 
as   a   fact,    Sheridan   took   to   politics,   and   his 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        189 

mantle  fell  on  no  worthy  successor.  The  next 
craze  (for  which  he  was  partly  responsible)  was 
the  German  theatre  of  Kotzebue,  which  repre- 
sented the  intrusion  of  new  influences  and  the 
production  of  a  great  quantity  of  rubbish.  After 
Goldsmith  the  poetic  impulse  seems  to  have 
decayed    entirely.     After    the    Deserted    Village, 

i 

(1770)  no  striking  work  appeared  till  Crabbe 
published  his  first  volume  (1781),  and  was  fol-, 
lowed  by  his  senior,  Cowper,  in  1782.  Both]of 
them  employed  the  metre  of  Pope,  though  Cowper 
took  to  blank  verse ;  and  Crabbe,  though  he  had 
read  and  admired  Spenser,  was  to  the  end  of  his 
career  a  thorough  disciple  of  Pope.  Johnson 
read  and  revised  his  Village,  which  was  thoroughly 
in  harmony  with  the  old  gentleman's  poetic  creed . 
Yet  both  Cowper  and  Crabbe  stimulate  what  may 
be  called  in  some  sense  "a  return  to  Nature"; 
though  not  in  such  a  way  as  to  announce  a  literary 
revolution.  Each  was  restrained  by  personal  con- 
ditions. Cowper's  poetical  aims  were  profoundly 
affected  by  his  religious  views.  The  movement 
which  we  call  Methodist  was  essentially  moral 
and  philanthropic.  It  agreed  so  far  with  Rous- 
seau's sentimentalism  that  it  denounced  the 
corruptions  of  the  existing  order  ;  but  instead 
of  attributing  the  evils  to  the  departure  from 
the  ideal  state  of  nature,  expressed  them  by  the 


iQo    English  Literature  and  Society 

theological  doctrine  of  the  corruption  of  the  human 
heart.  That  imphed  in  some  senses  a  fundamental 
difference.  But  there  was  a  close  coincidence  in 
the  judgment  of  actual  motives.  Cowper  fully 
agreed  with  Rousseau  that  our  rulers  had  become 
selfish  and  luxurious;  that  war  was  kept  up  to 
satisfy  the  ambition  of  kings  and  courtiers;  that 
vice  flourished  because  the  aims  of  our  rulers  and 
teachers  were  low  and  selfish,  and  that  slavery 
was  a  monstrous  evil  supported  by  the  greed 
of  traders.  Brown's  Estimate,  he  said,  was  thor- 
oughly right  as  to  our  degeneracy,  though  Brown 
had  not  perceived  the  deepest  root  of  the  evil. 
Cowper's  satire  has  lost  its  salt  because  he  had 
retired  too  completely  from  the  world  to  make  a 
telling  portrait.  But  he  succeeds  most  admirably 
when  he  finds  relief  from  the  tortures  of  insanity 
by  giving  play  to  the  exquisite  playfulness  and 
tenderness  which  was  never  destroyed  by  his 
melancholy.  He  delights  us  by  an  unconscious 
illustration  of  the  simple  domestic  life  in  the  quiet 
Olney  fields,  which  we  see  in  another  form  in  the 
charming  White  of  Selborne.  He  escapes  from 
the  ghastly  images  of  religious  insanity  when  he 
has  indulged  in  the  innocent  play  of  tender  and 
affectionate  emotions,  which  finds  itself  revealed 
in  tranquillising  scenery.  The  literar>'  result  is  a 
fresh  appreciation  of  "Nature."     Pope's  Nature 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        191 

has  become  for  him  artificial  and  conventional. 
From  a  religious  point  of  view  it  represents  "cold 
morality,"  and  the  substitution  of  logical  argu- 
mentation for  the  language  of  the  heart.  It 
suggests  the  cynicism  of  the  heartless  fine  gentle- 
man who  sneers  at  Wesley  and  Bunyan,  and 
covers  his  want  of  feeling  by  a  stilted  deism. 
Cowper  tried  unsuccessfully  to  supersede  Pope's 
Homer;  in  trying  to  be  simple  he  became  bald; 
but  he  also  tried  most  successfully  to  express  with 
absolute  sincerity  the  simple  and  deep  emotions 
of  an  exquisitely  tender  character. 

Crabbe  meanwhile  believed  in  Pope,  and  had  a 
sturdy  solid  contempt  for  Methodism.  Cowper's 
guide,  Newton,  would  have  passed  with  him  for 
a  nuisance  and  a  fanatic.  Crabbe  is  a  thorough 
realist.  In  some  ways  he  may  be  compared  to 
his  contemporary  Malthus.  Malthus  started, 
we  know,  by  refuting  the  sentimentalism  of 
Rousseau;  Crabbe's  Village  is  a  protest  against 
the  embodiment  of  the  same  spirit  in  Goldsmith. 
He  is  determined  to  see  things  as  they  are,  with 
no  rose-coloured  mist.  Crabbe  replies  to  critics 
that  if  his  realism  was  unpoetical,  the  criterion 
suggested  would  condemn  much  of  Dryden  and 
Pope  as  equally  unpoetical.  He  was  not  re- 
nouncing but  carrying  on  the  tradition,  and 
was  admired  by  Byron  in  his  rather  wayward 


192    English  Literature  and  Society 

mood  of  Pope-worship  as  the  last  representative 
of  the  legitimate  school.  The  position  is  signifi- 
cant. Crabbe  condemns  Goldsmith's  "Nature" 
because  it  is  "unnatural. "  It  means  the  Utopian 
ideal  of  Rousseau  which  never  did  and  never  can 
exist.  It  belongs  to  the  world  of  old-fashioned 
pastoral  poetry,  in  which  Corydon  and  Thyrsis 
had  their  being.  He  will  paint  British  squires 
and  farmers  and  labourers  as  he  has  seen  them 
with  his  own  eyes.  The  Wit  has  become  for  him 
the  mere  fop,  whose  poetry  is  an  arbitrary  con- 
vention, a  mere  plaything  for  the  fine  ladies  and 
gentlemen  detached  from  the  living  interests  of 
mankind.  The  Pope  tradition  is  still  maintained, 
but  is  to  be  revised  by  being  brought  down  again 
to  contact  with  solid  earth.  Therefore  on  the  one 
hand  he  is  thoroughly  in  harmony  with  Johnson, 
the  embodiment  of  common-sense,  and  on  the 
other,  he  excited  the  enthusiasm  of  Wordsworth  and 
Scott,  who,  though  leaders  of  a  new  movement, 
heartily  sympathised  with  his  realism  and  rejec- 
tion of  the  old  conventionalism.  Though  Crabbe 
regards  Cowper's  religion  as  fanaticism,  they  are 
so  far  agreed  that  both  consider  that  poetry  has 
become  divorced  from  reality  and  reflects  the  ugly 
side  of  actual  human  nature.  They  do  not  pro- 
pose a  revolution  in  its  methods,  but  to  put  fresh 
life  into  it  by  seeing  things  as  they  are.     And 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        193 

both  of  them,  living  in  the  country,  apply  the 
principle  to  "Nature"  in  the  sense  of  scenery. 
Cowper  gives  interest  to  the  flat  meadows  of  the 
Ouse ;  and  Crabbe,  a  botanist  and  lover  of  natural 
history,  paints  with  unrivalled  fidelity  and  force 
the  flat  shores  and  tideways  of  his  native  East 
Anglia.  They  are  both  therefore  prophets  of  a 
love  of  Nature,  in  one  of  the  senses  of  the  Protean 
word.  Cowper,  who  prophesied  the  fall  of  the 
Bastille  and  denounced  luxury,  was  to  some 
extent  an  unconscious  ally  of  Rousseau,  though 
he  regarded  the  religious  aspects  of  Rousseau's 
doctrine  as  shallow  and  unsatisfactory.  Crabbe 
shows  the  attitude  of  which  Johnson  is  the  most 
characteristic  example.  Johnson  was  thoroughly 
content  with  the  old  school  in  so  far  as  it  meant 
that  poetry  must  be  thoroughly  rational  and  sensi- 
ble. His  hatred  of  cant  and  foppery  was  so  far 
congenial  to  the  tradition ;  but  it  implied  a  differ- 
ence. To  him  Pope's  metaphysical  system  was 
mere  foppery,  and  the  denunciation  of  luxury 
mere  cant.  He  felt  mere  contempt  for  Gold- 
smith's flirtation  with  that  vein  of  sentiment. 
His  dogged  conservatism  prevented  him  from 
recognising  the  strength  of  the  philosophical 
movements  which  were  beginning  to  clothe  them- 
selves in  Rousseauism.  Burke,  if  he  condemned 
the  revolutionary   doctrine  ^  wicked,   saw  di§- 


1 94    English  Literature  and  Society 

tinctly  how  potent  a  lesson  it  was  becoming. 
Johnson,  showing  the  true  British  indifference, 
could  treat  the  movement  with  contempt — Himie's 
scepticism  was  a  mere  "milking  the  bull" — a  love 
of  paradox  for  its  own  sake — and  Wilkes  and  the 
Whigs,  though  wicked  in  intention,  were  simple 
and  superficial  dealers  in  big  words.  In  the  lit- 
erary application,  the  same  sturdy  common-sense 
was  opposed  to  the  Pope  tradition  so  far  as  that 
tradition  opposed  common-sense.  Conventional 
diction,  pastorals,  and  twaddle  about  Nature 
belonged  to  the  nonsensical  side.  He  entirely 
sympathised  with  Crabbe's  substitution  of  the 
real  living  brutish  clown  for  the  unreal  swain 
of  Arcadia;  that  is,  for  developing  poetry  by 
making  it  thoroughly  realistic  even  at  the  cost  of 
being  prosaic. 

So  far  the  tendency  to  realism  was  thoroughly 
congenial  to  the  matter-of-fact  utilitarian  spirit  of 
the  time,  and  was  in  some  sense  in  harmony  with 
a  "return  to  Natiire. "  But  it  was  unconsciously 
becoming  divorced  from  some  of  the  great  move- 
ments of  thought,  of  which  it  failed  to  perceive 
the  significance.  A  new  inspiration  was  showing 
itself,  to  which  critics  have  done  at  least  ample 
justice.  The  growth  of  history  had  led  to  re- 
newed interest  in  much  that  had  been  despised 
as  mere  curiosities  or  ridiculed  as  implying  the 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century         195 

barbarism  of  our  ancestors.  I  have  already 
noticed  the  dilettanteism  of  the  previous  generation, 
and  the  interest  of  Gray  and  Collins  and  Warton 
and  Walpole  in  antiquarian  researches.  Gothic 
had  ceased  to  be  a  simple  term  of  reproach.  The 
old  English  literature  is  beginning  to  be  studied 
seriously.  Pope  and  Warburton  and  Johnson 
had  all  edited  Shakespeare;  Garrick  had  given 
him  fresh  popularity,  and  the  first  edition  of 
Old  Plays  by  Dodsley  appeared  in  1744.  Sim- 
ilar studies  were  extending  in  many  directions. 
Mallet  in  his  work  upon  Denmark  (1755)  gave 
a  translation  of  the  Eddas  which  called  attention 
to  Scandinavian  mjrthology.  Bodmer  soon 
afterwards  published  for  the  first  time  the 
Nibelungen  Lied.  Macpherson  startled  the  lite- 
rary world  in  1762  by  what  professed  to  be  an 
epic  poem  from  the  Gaelic.  Chatterton's  career 
(175 2-1 7 70)  was  a  proof  not  only  of  unique  poeti- 
cal precocity,  but  of  a  singular  facility  in  divining 
the  tastes  of  the  literary  world  at  the  time. 
Percy's  Reliques  appeared  in  1765.  Percy,  I 
may  note,  had  begun  oddly  enough  by  publish- 
ing a  Chinese  novel  (1761),  and  a  translation  of 
Icelandic  poetry  (1763).  Not  long  afterwards  Sir 
William  Jones  published  translations  of  Oriental 
poetry.  Briefly,  as  historical,  philological,  and 
antiqiiarian  research  extended,  the  man  of  letters 


10    English  Literature  and  Society 

was  also  beginning  to  seek  for  new  "motives," 
and  to  discover  merits  in  old  forms  of  literature. 
The  importance  of  this  new  impulse  cannot  be 
over-estimated,  but  it  may  be  partly  misinter- 
preted. It  is  generally  described  as  a  foretaste 
of  what  is  called  the  Romantic  movement.  The 
word  is  no  doubt  very  useful — though  exceedingly 
vague.  The  historian  of  literature  is  sometimes 
given  to  speak  as  though  it  meant  the  revelation 
of  a  new  and  definite  creed.  He  speaks,  that  is, 
like  the  historian  of  science,  who  accepts  Darv\'in- 
ism  as  the  revelation  of  a  new  principle  transfusing 
the  old  conceptions,  and  traces  the  various  antici- 
pations, the  seminal  idea;  or  like  the  Protestant 
theologian  who  used  to  regard  Luther  as  having 
announced  the  full  truth  dimly  foreseen  by  Wicliff 
or  the  Albigenses.  Romanticism,  that  is,  is 
treated  as  a  single  movement ;  while  the  men  who 
share  traces  of  the  taste  are  supposed  to  have  not 
only  foreseen  the  new  doctrine  but  to  have  been  the 
actual  originators.  Yet  I  think  that  all  compe- 
tent writers  will  also  agree  that  Romanticism  is  a 
name  which  has  been  applied  to  a  number  of  diver- 
gent or  inconsistent  schools.  It  seems  to  mean 
every  impulse  which  tended  to  find  the  old  clothing 
inadequate  for  the  new  thoughts,  which  caused 
dissatisfaction  with  the  old  philosophical  and 
religious  or  political  systems  and  aspirations,  and 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        197 

took  a  corresponding  variety  of  literary  forms^ 
It  is  far  too  complex  a  phenomenon  to  be  summed 
up  in  any  particular  formula.  The  mischief  is 
that  to  take  the  literary  evolution  as  an  isolated 
phenomenon  is  to  miss  an  essential  clue  to  such 
continuity  and  unity  as  it  really  possesses.  When 
we  omit  the  social  factor,  the  solidarity  which 
exists  between  contemporaries  occupied  with  the 
same  problem  and  sharing  certain  common  beliefs, 
each  school  appears  as  an  independent  unit,  im- 
plying a  discontinuity  or  a  simple  relation  of 
contrariety,  and  we  explain  the  succession  by  such 
a  verbal  phrase  as  "reaction. "  The  real  problem 
is,  what  does  the  reaction  mean?  and  that  requires 
us  to  take  into  account  the  complex  and  variously 
composed  currents  of  thought  and  reason  which 
are  seeking  for  literary  expression.  The  popu- 
larity of  Ossian,  for  example,  is  a  curious  phe- 
nomenon. At  the  first  sight  we  are  disposed  to 
agree  with  Johnson  that  any  man  could  write 
such  stuff  if  he  would  abandon  his  mind  to  it,  and 
to  add  that  if  any  one  would  write  it  no  one  could 
read  it.  Yet  we  know  that  Ossian  appealed  to 
the  gigantic  intellects  of  Goethe  and  Napoleon. 
That  is  a  symptom  of  deep  significance ;  Ossian 
suited  Goethe  in  the  Werther  period  and  Napoleon 
took  it  with  him  when  he  was  dreaming  of  rivalling 
Alexander's   conquests  in  the   East.     We  may 


198    English  Literature  and  Society 

perhaps  understand  why  the  gigantesque  pictures 
in  Ossian  ot  the  northern  mountains  and  scenery — 
with  all  its  vagueness,  incoherence,  and  bombast, 
was  somehow  congenial  to  minds  dissatisfied,  for 
different  reasons,  with  the  old  ideals.  To  explain 
the  charm  more  precisely  is  a  very  pretty  pro- 
blem for  the  acute  critic.  Ossian,  it  is  clear,  fell  in 
with  the  mood  characteristic  of  the  time.  But 
when  we  ask  what  effect  it  produced  in  English 
literature,  the  answer  must  surely  be,  "Next  to 
none. "  Gray  was  enthusiastic  and  tried  to  believe 
in  its  authenticity.  Scots,  like  Blair  and  even  the 
sceptical  Hume — though  Hume  soon  revolted — 
defended  Ossian  out  of  patriotic  prejudice,  and 
Bums  professed  to  admire.  But  nobody  in  Great 
Britain  took  to  writing  Ossianesque.  Wordsworth 
was  simply  disgusted  by  the  unreality,  and  nothing 
could  be  less  in  the  Ossian  vein  than  Burns.  The 
Ossian  craze  illustrates  the  extension  of  historical 
interest,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  and  the  vague 
discontent  of  Wertherism.  But  I  do  not  see  how 
the  publication  can  be  taken  as  the  cause  of  a  new 
departiire,  although  it  was  an  indication  of  the 
state  of  mind  which  led  to  a  new  departiu"e. 
Percy's  Reliques,  again,  is  often  mentioned  as  an 
"epoch-making"  book.  Undoubtedly  it  was  a 
favourite  with  Scott  and  many  other  readers  of 
his  generation.     But  how  far  did  it  create  any 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century        199 

change  of  taste  ?  The  old  ballad  was  on  one  side 
congenial  to  the  classical  school,  as  Addison  showed 
by  his  criticism  of  Chevy  Chase  for  its  simple 
version  of  a  heroic  theme.  Goldsmith  tried  his 
hand  at  a  ballad  about  the  same  time  with  Percy, 
and  both  showed  that  they  were  a  little  too  much 
afraid  that  simplicity  might  degenerate  into  child- 
ishness, and  gain  Johnson's  contempt.  But  there 
was  nothing  in  the  old  school  incompatible 
with  a  rather  patronising  appreciation  of  the 
popular  poetry.  It  gained  fresh  interest  when 
the  historical  tendency  gave  a  newer  meaning 
to  the  old  society  in  which  ballad  poetry  had 
flourished. 

This  suggests  the  last  remark  which  I  have 
room  to  make.  One  characteristic  of  the  period 
is  a  growth  of  provincial  centres  of  some  intellec- 
tual culture.  As  manufactures  extended,  and 
manufacturers  began  to  read,  circles  of  some 
literary  pretensions  sprang  up  in  Norwich,  Bir- 
mingham, Bristol,  and  Manchester;  and  most 
conspicuously  in  Edinburgh.  Though  the  Scot 
was  coming  south  in  numbers  which  alarmed 
Johnson,  there  were  so  many  eminent  Scots  at 
home  during  this  time  that  Edinburgh  seems  at 
least  to  have  rivalled  London  as  an  intellectual 
centre.  The  list  of  great  men  includes  Hume  and 
Adam  Smith    Robertson  and  Hailes  and  Adam 


200   English  Literature  and  Society 

Ferguson,  Karnes,  Monboddo,  and  Dugald  Stewart 
among  philosophers  and  historians;  John  Home, 
Blair,  G.  Campbell,  Beattie,  and  Henry  Mackenzie, 
among  men  of  letters;  Hutton,  Black,  CuUen, 
and  Gregory  among  scientific  leaders.  Scottish 
patriotism  then,  as  at  other  periods,  was  vigorous 
and  happily  ceasing  to  be  antagonistic  to  unionist 
sentiment.  The  Scot  admitted  that  he  was 
touched  by  provincialism;  but  he  retained  a 
national  pride,  and  only  made  the  modest  and 
most  justifiable  claim  that  he  was  intrinsically 
superior  to  the  Southron.  He  still  preserved 
intellectual  and  social  traditions,  and  cherished 
them  the  more  warmly,  which  marked  him  as 
a  distinct  member  of  the  United  Kingdom.  In 
Scotland  the  rapid  industrial  development  had 
given  fresh  life  to  the  whole  society  without 
obliterating  its  distinctive  peculiarities.  Song  and 
ballad  and  local  legends  were  still  alive,  and  not 
merely  objects  of  literary  curiosity.  It  was  under 
such  conditions  that  Bums  appeared,  the  greatest 
beyond  compare  of  all  the  self-taught  poets.  Now 
there  can  be  no  explanation  whatever  of  the 
occurrence  of  a  man  of  genius  at  a  given  time 
and  place.  For  anything  we  can  say,  Bums  was 
an  accident;  but  given  the  genius,  his  relation 
was  clear,  and  the  genius  enabled  him  to  recognise 
it  with  unequalled  clearness.     Bums  became,  as 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       201 

he  has  continued,  the  embodiment  of  the  Scottish 
genius.  Scottish  patriotic  feeling  animates  some 
of  his  noblest  poems,  and  whether  as  an  original 
writer — and  no  one  could  be  more  original — or  as 
adapting  and  revising  the  existing  poetry,  he 
represents  the  essential  spirit  of  the  Scottish 
peasant.  I  need  not  point  out  that  this  implies 
certain  limitations,  and  some  faiHngs  worse  than 
limitation.  But  it  implies  also  the  spontaneous 
and  masculine  vigour  which  we  may  call  poetic 
inspiration  of  the  highest  kind.  He  had  of  course 
read  the  English  authors  such  as  Addison  and 
Pope.  So  far  as  he  tried  to  imitate  the  accepted 
form  he  was  apt  to  lose  his  fire.  He  is  inspired 
when  he  has  a  nation  behind  him  and  is  the 
mouthpiece  of  sentiments,  traditional,  but  also 
living  and  vigorous.  He  represents,  therefore, 
a  new  period.  The  lyrical  poetry  seemed  to  have 
died  out  in  England.  It  suddenly  comes  to  life 
in  Scotland  and  reaches  unsurpassable  excellence 
within  certain  limits,  because  a  man  of  true  genius 
rises  to  utter  the  emotions  of  a  people  in  their 
most  natural  form  without  bothering  about  canons 
of  literary  criticism.  The  society  and  the  indivi- 
dual are  in  thorough  harmony,  and  that,  I  take  it, 
is  the  condition  of  really  great  literature  at  all 
times. 

This  must  suggest  my  concluding  moral.    The 


202    English  Literature  and  Society 

watchword  of  every  literary  school  may  be  brought 
tinder  the  formula,  "Return  to  Nature";  though 
"Nature"  receives  different  interpretations.  To 
be  natural,  on  the  one  hand,  is  to  be  sincere  and 
spontaneous ;  to  utter  the  emotions  natural  to  you 
in  the  forms  which  are  also  natural,  so  far  as  the 
accepted  canons  are  not  rules  imposed  by  authority 
but  have  been  so  thoroughly  assimilated  as  to 
express  your  own  instinctive  impulses.  On  the 
other  side,  it  means  that  the  literature  must  be 
produced  by  the  class  which  embodies  the  really 
vital  and  powerful  currents  of  thought  that  are 
moulding  society.  The  great  author  must  have 
a  people  behind  him;  utter  both  what  he  really 
thinks  and  feels  and  what  is  thought  and  felt 
most  profoundly  by  his  contemporaries.  As  the 
literature  ceases  to  be  truly  representative,  and 
adheres  to  the  conventionalism  of  the  former 
period,  it  becomes  "unnatural"  and  the  literary 
forms  become  a  survival  instead  of  a  genuine 
creation.  The  history  of  eighteenth-century 
literature  illustrates  this  by  showing  how  as  the 
social  changes  give  new  influence  to  the  middle 
class  and  then  to  the  democracy,  the  aristocratic 
class  which  represented  the  culture  of  the  open- 
ing stage  is  gradually  pushed  aside;  its  methods 
become  antiquated  and  its  conventions  cease  to 
represent  the  ideals  of  the  most  vigorous  part 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       203 

of  the  population.  The  return  to  Nature  with 
Pope  and  Addison  and  Swift  meant:  get  rid  of 
pedantry,  be  thoroughly  rational,  and  take  for 
your  guide  the  bright  common-sense  of  the  Wit 
and  the  scholar.  During  Pope's  supremacy  the 
Wit  who  represents  the  aristocracy  produces 
some  admirably  polished  work;  but  the  develop- 
ment of  journalism  and  Grub  Street  shows  that 
he  is  writing  to  satisfy  the  popular  interests  so 
keenly  watched  by  DeFoe  in  Grub  Street.  In 
the  period  of  Richardson  and  Fielding  Nature 
has  become  the  Nature  of  the  middle-class  John 
Bull.  The  old  romances  have  become  hopelessly 
unnatural,  and  they  will  give  us  portraits  of  living 
human  beings,  whether  Clarissa  or  Tom  Jones. 
The  rationalism  of  the  higher  class  strikes  them 
as  cynical,  and  the  generation  which  listens  to 
Wesley  must  have  also  a  secular  literature,  which, 
whether  sentimental  as  with  Richardson  or  repre- 
senting common-sense  with  Fielding,  must  at  any 
rate  correspond  to  solid  substantial  matter-of-fact 
motives,  intelligible  to  the  ordinary  Briton  of  the 
time.  In  the  last  period,  the  old  literary  con- 
ventions, though  retaining  their  old  literary 
prestige,  are  becoming  threadbare  while  preserv- 
ing the  old  forms.  Even  the  Johnsonian  conserva- 
tism implies  hatred  for  cant,  for  mere  foppery, 
and  sham  sentimentalism ;  and  though  it  uses 


204    English  Literature  and  Society 

them,  insists  with  Crabbe  upon  keeping  in  contact 
with  fact.     We  must  be  "  realistic, ' '  though  we  can 
retain   the   old   literary  forms.     The   appeal   to 
Nature,  meanwhile,  has  come  with  Rousseau  and 
the  revolutionists  to  mean  something  different — 
the  demand,  briefly,  for  a  thorough-going  recon- 
struction of  the  whole  philosophical  and  social 
fabric.  To  the  good  old  Briton,  Whig  or  Tory,  that 
seemed  to  be  either  diabolical  or  mere  Utopian 
folly.     To  him  the  British  Constitution  is  still 
thoroughly  congenial  and  "natural. "     Meanwhile 
intellectual  movement  has  introduced  a  new  ele- 
ment.    The  historical  sense  is  being  developed,  as 
a  settled  society  with  a  complex  organisation  be- 
comes conscious  at  once  of  its  continuity  and  of 
the  slow  processes  of  growth  by  which  it  has  been 
elaborated.    The  fusion  of  English  and  Scottish 
nations  stimulates  the  patriotism  of  the  smaller 
though  better  race,  and  generates  a  passionate 
enthusiasm   for  the  old  literature  which  repre- 
sents the  characteristic  genius  of  the  smaller  com- 
munity.    Bums  embodies  the  sentiment,  though 
without    any    conscious    reference     to     theories 
philosophical  or  historical.      The  significance  was 
to   be    illustrated  by   Scott — an   equally   fervid 
patriot.     He  tells  Crabbe  how  oddly  a  passage 
in   the    Village  was   associated   in   his   memory 
with   border-riding   ballads    and   scraps    of   old 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       205 

plays.  "Nature"  for  Scott  meant  "his  honest 
grey  hills"  speaking  in  every  fold  of  old  tradi- 
tional lore.  That  meant,  in  one  sense,  that  Scott 
was  not  only  romantic  but  reactionary.  That 
was  his  weakness.  But  if  he  was  the  first  to  make 
the  past  alive,  he  was  also  the  first  to  make  the 
present  historical.  His  masterpieces  are  not  his 
descriptions  of  mediaeval  knights  so  much  as  the 
stories  in  which  he  illuminates  the  present  by  his 
vivid  presentation  of  the  present  order  as  the  out- 
growth from  the  old,  and  makes  the  Scottish 
peasant  or  lawyer  or  laird  interesting  as  a  product 
and  a  type  of  social  conditions.  Nature  therefore 
to  him  includes  the  natural  processes  by  which 
society  has  been  developed  under  the  stress  of 
circumstances.  Nothing  could  be  more  unnatural 
for  him  than  the  revolutionary  principle  which 
despises  tradition  and  regards  the  patriotic  senti- 
ment as  superfluous  and  irrational.  Wordsworth 
represents  again  another  sense  of  Nature.  He 
announced  as  his  special  principle  that  poetry 
should  speak  the  language  of  Nature,  and  there- 
fore, as  he  inferred,  of  the  ordinary  peasant 
and  uneducated  man.  The  hills  did  not  speak 
to  him  of  legend  or  history  but  of  the  sentiment 
of  the  unsophisticated  yeoman  or  "statesman." 
He  sympathised  enthusiastically  with  the  French 
Revolution  so  long  as  he  took  it  to  utter  the 


2o6   English  Literature  and  Society 

simple  republican  sentiment  congenial  to  a  small 
society  of  farmers  and  shepherds.  He  abandoned 
it  when  he  came  to  think  that  it  really  meant 
the  dissolution  of  the  religious  and  social  senti- 
ments which  correspond  to  the  deepest  instincts 
which  bound  such  men  together.  Coleridge 
represents  a  variation.  He  was  the  first  English- 
man to  be  affected  by  the  philosophical  movement 
of  Germany.  He  had  been  an  ardent  revolu- 
tionist in  the  days  when  he  adopted  the  meta- 
phj^sics  of  Hartley  and  Priestley,  which  fell 
in  with  the  main  eighteenth-century  current  of 
scepticism.  He  came  to  think  that  the  move- 
ment represented  a  perversion  of  the  intellect. 
It  meant  materialism  and  scepticism,  or  inter- 
preted Nature  as  a  mere  dead  mechanism.  It 
omitted,  therefore,  the  essential  element  which  is 
expressed  by  what  we  may  roughly  call  the  mysti- 
cal tendency  in  philosophy.  Nature  must  be 
taken  as  the  embodiment  of  a  divine  idea. 
Nature,  therefore,  in  his  poetry,  is  regarded  not 
from  Scott's  point  of  view  as  subordinate  to  human 
history,  or  from  Wordsworth's  as  teaching  the 
wisdom  of  unsophisticated  mankind,  but  rather 
as  a  symbolism  legible  to  the  higher  imagination. 
Though  his  fine  critical  sense  made  him  keep  his 
philosophy  and  his  poetry  distinct,  that  is  the 
common  tendency  which  gives  unity  to  his  work 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century       207 

and  which  made  his  utterances  so  stimulating  to 
congenial  intellects.  His  criticism  of  the  "  Nature" 
of  Pope  and  Bolingbroke  would  be  substantially, 
that  in  their  hands  the  reason  which  professed 
to  interpret  Nature  became  cold  and  materialistic, 
because  its  logic  left  out  of  account  the  mysterious 
but  essential  touches  revealed  only  to  the  heart, 
or,  in  his  language,  to  the  reason  but  not  to  the 
understanding.  Meanwhile,  though  the  French 
revolutionary  doctrines  were  preached  in  England, 
they  only  attracted  the  literary  leaders  for  a  time, 
and  it  was  not  till  the  days  of  Byron  and  Shelley 
that  they  found  thorough-going  representatives 
in  English  poetry.  On  that,  however,  I  must  not 
speak.  I  have  tried  to  indicate  briefly  how  Scott 
and  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  the  most  eminent 
leaders  of  the  new  school,  partly  represented  move- 
ments already  obscurely  working  in  England,  and 
how  they  were  affected  by  the  new  ideas  which 
had  sprung  to  life  elsewhere.  They,  like  their 
predecessors,  were  essentially  trying  to  cast  aside 
the  literary  "survivals"  of  effete  conditions,  and 
they  succeeded  so  far  as  they  could  find 
adequate  expression  for  the  great  ideas  of  their 
time. 


FEB  19  mS 


